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Fried Tongue

Fried tongue with onion sauce made from browned flour, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard, cayenne pepper, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Slice the cold boiled tongue.

  2. Fry the slices quickly in dripping or butter.

  3. Add the chopped onion before the tongue is fully fried.

  4. Arrange the fried slices neatly in a hot-water dish, overlapping them.

Make the sauce

  1. Strain the fat and return it to the fire.

  2. Stir in the browned flour, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, mustard, cayenne, and boiling water.

  3. Stir and boil for one minute, then pour the sauce over the tongue.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Tongue
Provides the meat that is sliced and fried, giving the dish its main body and savoury flavour.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce as it boils, giving it body and a slightly nutty, toasted flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fat and balances the savoury sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it cooks in the fat, adding aroma and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the slices quickly. Tongue is already cooked, so brief high heat is enough to brown the surface without drying the meat. Overcooking toughens the slices and makes them dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sauce, vinegar, mustard, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sauce, vinegar, mustard, pepper. 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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