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Boiled Beef Tongue

A boiled beef tongue served hot with mashed Irish potatoes and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Beef Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongue well and scrape the root.

  2. Soak the tongue in cold water the day before, changing the water once or twice.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the tongue in a pot with cold water and boil for 6 hours.

  2. Remove the tongue and trim it neatly.

  3. Serve hot with mashed Irish potatoes and parsley sprigs.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Long simmering breaks down connective tissue, making the dense meat tender enough to slice.

The step that matters

Boil the tongue for the full six hours. Long, gentle cooking converts tough connective tissue into gelatin, so the meat becomes tender and easy to peel and trim. Stopping early leaves the tongue firm and chewy.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, potato):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, potato. 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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