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Braised Tongue

Braised tongue cooked with butter, onions, turnip, carrot, herbs, and lemon, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Braised Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil the tongue in water for 2 hours.

  2. Trim the boiled tongue.

  3. Tie the tip of the tongue around the thick part to form a roll.

  4. Flour the tongue all over.

Brown the vegetables and tongue

  1. In a pan, fry the onions, turnip, and carrot in butter until browned.

  2. Set the browned vegetables aside.

  3. Brown the floured tongue in the same pan with butter.

Braise and finish

  1. Place the tongue and all other ingredients, except the lemon juice, in a pot with a tight lid.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours, turning the tongue halfway.

  3. Add lemon juice to the pot during baking.

  4. Transfer the tongue to a hot dish over hot water.

  5. Boil down the gravy for 20-30 minutes.

  6. Mix cornstarch with cold water.

  7. Stir the mixture into the boiling gravy.

  8. Cook for 2-3 minutes.

  9. Strain some gravy over the tongue and serve the rest in a sauceboat.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Main meat that becomes tender and rich through long, moist cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and helps brown the floured tongue and vegetables.
Onions
Browned first to build savory depth and sweetness for the gravy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich braising liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the floured tongue. Flour and butter need enough heat to brown without burning, and that browning builds flavor in the pan that carries into the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, lemon, turnip):

  1. Kalefits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, garlic, cinnamon, pepper, lemon, turnip. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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