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Ox Tongue, Fresh, Stewed
Soak a fresh ox tongue for about an hour. Drain it, and put it into a saucepan with plenty of cold water. Bring it slowly to a boil, then draw the saucepan to the side, and simmer very gently until it is done enough. Take off the skin. Brown a table-spoonful of flour in two ounces of butter; add as much of the liquid in which the tongue was boiled as will make the sauce of the thickness of cream, and put with it a finely-minced onion, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, half a table-spoonful of bruised capers, two sardines, a little sliced lemon, and salt and cayenne to taste. Simmer the tongue in this sauce of about an hour, place it on a hot dish, boil the sauce up once more with a table-spoonful of vinegar and a glassful of sherry of Madeira, pour it over the tongue, and serve immediately. Time, altogether, about four hours. Probable cost, 4s. to 6s. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A straightforward two-stage braise: the tongue is poached until tender, skinned, then finished in a brown sauce sharpened with capers, sardines and fortified wine. Almost everything hinges on the peeling step.
- Peel it hotThe tough outer skin slips off cleanly only while the tongue is still very hot from the poaching liquid. Let it cool and the skin bonds fast; you will end up carving it away and losing meat with it.
- What "done enough" meansFor a whole fresh ox tongue, count on roughly two to three hours at a bare simmer; the recipe's four hours in total has to cover the hour in the sauce as well. It is ready when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance; the tip will feel done before the butt end.
- Trimming after skinningThe recipe says nothing about the root end, which carries gristle, small bones and fatty glands. Cut that away before the tongue goes into the sauce.
- Fresh, not pickledA fresh (unbrined) ox tongue is a special order from most butchers now. If you are given a cured or corned tongue instead, the hour's soak in the original is nowhere near enough to draw the salt, and the sauce will be inedibly salty.
- The sardinesThey are there as a savoury base, the way anchovy is used in English sauces of the period. Two oil-packed fillets mashed in will largely dissolve into the sauce, reading as savoury depth rather than as fish.
- A glassful of sherryA wineglass in Victorian cookery books runs about 2 fl oz, so roughly a quarter cup. Add it at the end as directed and boil once, which is enough to cook off the raw spirit without losing the aroma.
- Sauce consistencyOne tablespoon of flour in 2 oz butter is a loose ratio; add the poaching liquid gradually until it coats a spoon like thin cream. It will tighten during the hour of simmering, so err on the thin side.
- Yield and carvingEight or nine servings is right for a whole tongue. Slice it across the grain, thin at the tip and thicker toward the butt, and spoon the sauce over at the table.
Tongue was standard middle-class fare in Britain when this dictionary was compiled: large enough to feed a table, and useful cold for days afterward, which is why so many Victorian books give it both boiled-and-pressed and stewed treatments. The sauce here belongs to a recognisable nineteenth-century English family in which anchovy or sardine, capers, lemon and a fortified wine are worked into a brown roux to cut the richness of a fatty cut. The costing of 4s. to 6s. is a reminder of how the book was used: the price of the joint mattered as much as the method, and a dish feeding nine for a few shillings was an argument in itself. Fresh tongue has since largely retreated to butchers and offal specialists in Britain and North America, though it stayed central in Jewish, Mexican and Central European kitchens throughout.