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Mutton Tongues
Boil in good stock broth, having first blanched them, half a dozen sheep's tongues until the skin may be taken off easily, then split them nearly through without separating them. Put them into a stewpan with a little of the stock, a glassful of white wine, half a pint of small onions previously fried in butter, a little shredded shallot, or if liked a small bit of garlic and some button mushrooms, with a tea-spoonful of mixed spice, and some pepper and salt. When the onions are tender, set the tongues on a dish, roots inwards, and serve with a puree of onions or turnips in the centre, and the small onions as a garnish round them. Time to boil, two to three hours; to warm in sauce, fifteen minutes.
A straightforward braise that hinges on one piece of timing: the skin only comes away cleanly while the tongues are hot. Everything else is a matter of translating Victorian volume measures.
- Peel them hotLift the tongues from the broth and skin them while they are almost too hot to handle, holding each in a cloth. Once cooled the skin tightens and clings, and you will tear the meat getting it off.
- Blanching firstCover the tongues with cold water, bring to the boil, drain and rinse. This removes scum and off-flavours so the stock stays clear.
- Cooking timeTwo to three hours is right for mature sheep's tongues but long for the lamb tongues sold today, which are usually tender at 1½ to 2 hours. Keep the pot at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil, and test with a skewer at the thick root.
- A glassful of white wineThe book does not say what size glass. Victorian wineglass measures are commonly reckoned at about 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, though usage varied from book to book, so treat this as imprecise; anything from 2 fl oz up to a scant 1/2 cup will suit the quantity of stock here.
- Half a pint of small onionsA volume measure, not a weight: half an imperial pint (10 fl oz) of peeled pearl or small pickling onions, which will weigh rather less than 10 oz. Frozen peeled pearl onions work and save the tedious peeling, though they need less frying.
- Mixed spiceUsually taken to mean the British sweet blend of allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger, sometimes with coriander, though in Victorian savoury cookery the term could also cover blends leaning on mace, cloves and pepper. American pumpkin pie spice is close enough at a teaspoon in a braise.
- SourcingLamb tongues are a butcher or halal-market item, usually sold frozen in packs. Six will serve three or four as a main course.
- "Roots inwards"Arrange the split tongues on the dish like the spokes of a wheel, thick ends toward the centre, so the puree sits in the middle and the small onions ring the outside. The final fifteen minutes in the sauce is only reheating.
Tongue was one of the cuts a nineteenth-century household could not afford to waste, and Cassell's treats it as ordinary rather than adventurous. Sheep's tongues, being small, lent themselves to this kind of arranged presentation: split and set in a wheel around a mound of puree, an arrangement French cookery would call en couronne. The white wine, button mushrooms, shallot and small onions are the standard furnishings of a French white ragoût, though the book gives the dish an English title. Offal of this sort stayed on British menus well into the twentieth century and became unfamiliar largely after post-war shifts in butchery and taste; it is still cheap, and still sold, for anyone who goes looking.