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Smoked Beef's Tongue

Smoked beef tongue simmered with herbs and onions, then sliced and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Smoked Beef's Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the smoked tongue in cold water for at least 3 hours, changing the water once or twice.

  2. Remove the thin skin from the tongue if necessary.

Simmer and cool

  1. Place the tongue in a saucepan with thyme, parsley, bay leaf, cloves, onions, and garlic.

  2. Fill the pan with cold water and let it simmer for about 6 hours, adding more water if it boils away.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool in the water.

  4. Once cooled, take it out, clean it, and let it dry.

Serve

  1. Slice the tongue and serve cold for sandwiches or with cucumber, piquant sauce, or tomato sauce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked beef tongue
Provides the main meat, with smoky flavour carried through the long simmer.
Onions
Add mild sweetness and aroma to the simmering liquid.
Garlic
Adds savoury aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Simmering for about 6 hours. Long, gentle simmering breaks down the tough connective tissue in the tongue, making it tender. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and cloud the liquid, and the pan must be topped up so the tongue stays submerged.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, parsley, onion, garlic):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, parsley, onion, garlic. 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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