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Spiced Sheeps' Tongues

Spiced sheep tongues are simmered with vinegar, spices, and seasonings, then cooled, skinned, trimmed, sliced, and served with olives or relish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Sheeps' Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the tongues

  1. Cook the sheep's tongues in water until almost tender.

  2. Add vinegar, bay leaf, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, salt, and pepper to the cooking liquid.

  3. Continue cooking slowly until the tongues are very tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Cool the tongues in the liquid, then skin and trim them.

  2. When ready to serve, cut the tongues in halves lengthwise.

  3. Serve with olives, gherkins, or a sour relish.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheeps' tongues
The main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering in the spiced liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the cooking liquid a sharp, tangy flavour.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, pungent aroma to the cooking liquid.
Allspice berries
Add a warm, mixed-spice aroma that flavours the tongues as they cook.
Cinnamon
Adds a sweet, woody aroma to the spiced cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Continue cooking slowly until the tongues are very tender.. Tongue is a tough muscle rich in connective tissue. Slow, gentle simmering breaks that tissue down into gelatin, while a hard boil can toughen the meat and leave it stringy.

“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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