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Ox Tongue, Curried
Mince finely four ounces of cooked ox tongue with one ounce of bacon fat; season with plenty of white pepper, curry-powder, and cayenne, and add a few chopped mushrooms. Cut a French dinner roll into slices, and toast them slightly on both sides. Dip them in a mixture of claret and beaten egg; sprinkle the slices with grated nutmeg and cayenne. Spread each thickly with the tongue mixture, and place a button mushroom in the centre of each; coat over with rich cream sauce, and make hot in a quick oven. Dish up, and serve with boiled rice. Probable cost, 4s. to 6s.
A late-Victorian savoury: spiced minced tongue on wine-soaked toast, baked under cream sauce. The whole thing hinges on the bread being just wet enough to absorb the claret and egg without collapsing.
- Quick ovenA "quick oven" is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-450F. The tongue is already cooked; the oven is only there to set the egg-soaked bread and glaze the sauce, so five to eight minutes is plenty.
- Cooked ox tongueMost likely leftovers from a whole tongue, which was commonly salted and pressed and a standard Victorian cold-table item. Deli-sliced pressed or cured tongue works; if it is salted, hold back on further salt and lean on the pepper and curry powder as written.
- French dinner rollNot a baguette. This means a small soft white roll, cut into rounds roughly half an inch thick. Anything too open-crumbed will disintegrate in the claret and egg.
- The dipRoughly two tablespoons of claret to one beaten egg for four to six slices. Dip briefly on both sides rather than soaking, or the toast will go to paste under the sauce.
- ClaretNineteenth-century English shorthand for red Bordeaux. Any dry, unoaked red of moderate tannin does the same job; the wine is there for acidity against the cream sauce.
- Bacon fatAn ounce is about two tablespoons, and it is the binder as much as the seasoning. Rendered bacon fat or lard, soft but not melted, mixed into the mince so it holds its shape when spread thickly.
- Curry-powderA Victorian commercial curry powder was turmeric-heavy, coriander-forward and comparatively mild. Modern Madras blends are hotter and more assertive, so start with a teaspoon for the four ounces of tongue and taste before adding the cayenne on top.
- Rich cream sauceA béchamel finished with cream, thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Too thin and it runs off the mounded mince into the dish.
- Yield and costFour ounces of tongue covers four to six rounds, which is one or two savoury portions, not a main course. The "4s. to 6s." is a cost in shillings, though it is high relative to the small quantities the recipe actually calls for.
This belongs to the class of recipe that existed to use up the cold joint with dignity. A whole ox tongue, brined and pressed, was a fixture of the Victorian cold sideboard and yielded far more meat than one meal required, so cookery books carried pages of ways to disguise the remainder. The curry powder and cayenne here are the standard Anglo-Indian seasoning that had been thoroughly domesticated in British kitchens, used less as a nod to Indian cooking than as a generic sharpener for cold meat. The form itself, a croustade of toasted bread carrying a highly seasoned mince, belongs to the savoury course served after the sweet at a formal English dinner, a course that was already peculiar to Britain when this book was compiled and largely gone within two generations.