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Calf's Tongues with Tomato Sauce
Trim the tongues, and put them into a stewpan with an onion, a stick of celery, a carrot, a turnip, and a bunch of herbs, and enough water or weak stock to cover. Season to taste, and simmer gently till tender (about three and a half hours); then skin, lay them on a hot dish, strain the liquor, add a quarter of a pint of thick tomato sauce, and pour over; garnish with small forcemeat balls.
A straightforward braise whose only real difficulty is sourcing the meat and remembering that tongue must be peeled while it is still hot.
- Skin them hotThe rough outer membrane slips off cleanly the moment the tongues come out of the liquor; once they cool it welds on and has to be cut away in strips. Lift one out at a time, hold it in a cloth, slit the skin along the underside and peel from the tip back.
- A quarter of a pintFive fluid ounces in British measure, so about two-thirds of a cup of sauce for the platter. Enough to coat rather than pool.
- Sourcing the tonguesCalf's tongue is a butcher's order rather than a supermarket item; each weighs roughly 1 to 1½ lb, against 3 to 4 lb or more for beef. Two will serve about four. Beef tongue substitutes, but wants longer — three to four hours or more — and is best sliced rather than served whole.
- "A bunch of herbs"In books of this period usually parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, sometimes with a strip of leek. Tie it so you can fish it out before straining.
- Season early, then taste laterSalt the cooking liquor at the start so it penetrates, but hold back — the strained liquor and the tomato sauce both concentrate, and tongue takes salt readily.
- Simmer, do not boilThree and a half hours at a bare tremble gives silky meat; a rolling boil in the same time makes it stringy and clouds the liquor you are about to strain for sauce.
- The forcemeat ballsA separate small job the recipe assumes you already know: seasoned sausagemeat or veal forcemeat rolled marble-sized, then fried or poached until cooked through, and added at the last moment as a garnish.
- Don't discard the liquorYou need only a little to loosen the sauce. What remains is an excellent light stock — strain, chill, lift the fat, and use within three days or freeze.
Tongue was a prestige cut in Victorian and Edwardian households rather than an oddity: it carved into neat rounds, held its shape when pressed and glazed, and appeared cold on buffet tables as often as hot. Cassell's, reissued over many decades, was written for a servant-keeping middle class buying whole heads, feet and offal from a butcher who broke down the animal himself, and its offal chapters are long because nothing was wasted. The tomato sauce may be a marker of the period's tastes: tinned and bottled tomato products became widely available in Britain in the later nineteenth century, and a "thick tomato sauce" hickened, often thickened with a roux wo turns up in books of this generation, apparently as a brighter alternative to the older brown and piquant sauces served with boiled meats. The forcemeat balls are the conservative element, a garnish often said to have been inherited more or less unchanged from Georgian cookery.