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Boiled Tongue

A boiled tongue served with tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, and parsley garnish.

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 Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongue well in two waters.

  2. Place the tongue in a kettle and cover it with plenty of cold water.

Boil and skin

  1. Boil the tongue until very tender.

  2. If serving cold, let it cool in the cooking water.

  3. Remove the tongue from the water.

  4. Skin the tongue.

Bake and serve

  1. Dip the tongue in beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Place the coated tongue in a 400°F (200°C) oven until slightly browned.

  3. Serve with tomato sauce and mashed potatoes, garnished with parsley.

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. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the tongue so the coating holds during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in the oven.
Tongue
Main protein; long simmering breaks down its connective tissue until tender.

The step that matters

Boil until very tender. Tongue is dense with connective tissue, which only softens into tender meat with long, gentle simmering. Stopping early leaves it tough and chewy, and it cannot be fixed by baking afterward.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, tomato, sauce, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, tomato, sauce, parsley. 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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