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To Pickle Tongue

A preserved tongue soaked in a salted, sugared, and spiced brine for one month.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Pickle Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pickle

  1. Salt the tongues.

  2. Boil the pickle ingredients in water.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Pickle

  1. Submerge the tongues in the cooled pickle for one month, turning them upside down occasionally.

  2. Remove the tongues from the pickle and wipe them dry.

Finish

  1. Tie them in brown paper.

  2. Smoke the tongues.

  3. Soak the tongues first.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Tongues
Main meat that becomes firm and tender as it cures in the brine.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while helping it keep during curing.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives it the characteristic pink curing color.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the salt.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and warm flavour to the cured surface.

The step that matters

Submerge the tongues in the cooled pickle for one month. Salt and curing agents penetrate meat slowly, so the tongues must stay fully covered and be turned now and then. Full contact lets the cure reach evenly to the centre and keeps the surface from spoiling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pepper, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, clove, allspice. 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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