Name: To Roast a Beef Tongue
Ingredients: 1 large fresh beef tongue; cloves; coarse sea salt; butter

Why it works: Beef and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,847 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

To Roast a Beef Tongue

Ingredients

1 large fresh beef tongue
cloves
coarse sea salt
butter

Directions

Scald the tongue and remove the skin.
Trim the root neatly.
Insert cloves into the tongue.
Place the tongue on a spit.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and baste with butter.

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.

Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,847 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,462 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Clove + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,045 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).