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Tongue with Sherry Sauce

Tongue with Sherry Sauce is a dish of boiled beef tongue served with a sherry‑infused broth thickened with gingerbread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tongue with Sherry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongue

  1. Boil the beef tongue until tender.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to taste while boiling.

Make the sauce

  1. Cook the can of mushrooms for 45 minutes.

  2. Reduce 1 pint of broth and thicken it with soft gingerbread.

  3. Slice the onion and lemon, removing the seeds from the lemon.

  4. Pour the thickened broth over the tongue and add the sherry wine.

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Is the main meat that becomes tender through long simmering.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that is reduced and thickened into the sauce.
Soft gingerbread
Thickens the broth and adds a spiced, sweet flavor to the sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the finished sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture to the dish.

The step that matters

Reduce and thicken the broth. Reducing concentrates the broth's flavor and thickening with gingerbread gives the sauce body. Adding the wine and sauce to the tongue too early or without reducing enough can leave the sauce thin and watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, mushroom, onion, sherry, wine):

  1. Grapefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, onion, sherry, wine. 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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