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Boiled Tongue

A boiled tongue served hot, often fried in egg and breadcrumbs, with a gravy thickened with flour and flavored with catsup or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape and wash the tongue very clean.

  2. Place it in a pot with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for every quart of water.

Boil and cut

  1. Boil until the top of the tongue looks clear and it is exceedingly soft.

  2. Once cold, cut the tongue into pieces.

Fry and serve

  1. Season and fry the pieces in egg and bread crumbs like oysters, or fry without egg and crumbs.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and flavor with catsup or vinegar.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,672 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Is the main meat, which becomes very soft through long, slow boiling.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the pieces rather than running thin.
Egg
Optional coating that helps bread crumbs stick and gives the fried pieces a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Optional coating that forms a crisp, browned exterior when fried.

The step that matters

Boil until very soft. Tongue is a tough muscle with a lot of connective tissue. Gentle simmering over a long period breaks that tissue down into tender meat. Stopping early leaves it firm and chewy.

“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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