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Boiled Tongue

A boiled beef tongue served hot or cold, seasoned with salt, onion, vinegar, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the tongue

  1. Place the fresh tongue in boiling water.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Add the salt.

  4. Continue boiling until a fork slips in easily.

  5. Remove as much water as possible without burning.

  6. Skim off any floating fat.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the sliced onion, vinegar, and catsup.

  2. Simmer for a few moments.

  3. Remove the tongue and peel off the skin.

Serve

  1. Place the tongue on a hot platter and pour some of the hot liquid over it, thickened with flour.

  2. Serve hot.

  3. If serving cold, place in a deep dish, cover with liquid, and cool quickly.

  4. When ready to serve cold, remove and wipe dry.

  5. Slice or serve whole 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. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Onion + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + walnuttop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh tongue
Is the main meat, becoming tender through long simmering in liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich cooking liquid.
Walnut catsup
Adds deep, savoury sweetness and colour to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce for the tongue.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until a fork slips in easily. Tongue is a tough muscle rich in connective tissue. Simmering slowly gives collagen time to break down into gelatin, so the meat becomes tender. Stopping early leaves it firm and chewy.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, flour):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, flour. 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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