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Ox Tongue, Pickled
Prepare the tongue in the usual way. Soak and dry it, and put it into a deep earthen pan with two dozen peppercorns, a bunch of basil, and a bunch of thyme. Make a pickle by boiling an ounce of saltpetre, an ounce of salprunella, a pound and a half of bay salt, and a pound of moist sugar in a gallon of water for twenty minutes. Let it get quite cold, then cover the tongue with this, and let it remain for ten days or a fortnight, the duration of the time to depend upon the season of the year: it should be longer in winter than in summer. When the tongue is taken out of the pickle it should be rubbed well with a dry cloth, and either cooked at once or hung up to dry. It is always best when cooked straight out of the pickle. This pickle may be used again and again for beef and tongues, but when it has been used a few weeks, it should be boiled gently with a little additional salt and sugar, and the scum carefully removed. Probable cost, 4s. to 6s.
This is a nitrate brine cure carried out at cellar temperature over a fortnight, with the brine reused for weeks at a time. The chemistry and the food-safety assumptions behind it are both obsolete, and the quantities cannot be scaled to a modern curing standard.
- The curing salts are out of rangeAn ounce of saltpetre plus an ounce of sal prunella in a gallon of brine gives no fixed dose per pound of meat, and the recipe never states the weight of the tongue. Nitrate curing today is measured in parts per million against the weight of the meat, and there is no way to work backwards from these figures to a controlled level.
- Sal prunellaFused potassium nitrate, cast into cakes or balls, once sold by druggists as much for sore throats as for curing. It is essentially saltpetre in another physical form, so the recipe is in effect a double dose of nitrate; it is not something a modern cook can buy or substitute.
- Temperature is never mentionedA tongue sitting in brine for ten days to a fortnight in a deep earthen pan assumes a cold larder, and the instruction that the time should be longer in winter than in summer is the only nod to warmth. Modern curing guidance specifies a measured 36-40F holding temperature throughout, precisely because a slow cure at uncontrolled cellar temperature leaves the interior of a whole tongue at risk from anaerobic spoilage organisms.
- The reused pickleBoiling the brine occasionally with extra salt and sugar and skimming the scum was the Victorian answer to a brine that had been in service for weeks. Repeated immersion of raw meat builds up protein, blood and bacterial load, and the salt and nitrate concentration drifts with every use in ways skimming does not correct.
- Bay saltCoarse solar-evaporated sea salt, sold in large damp crystals and much less pure than modern salt. Because its crystal size, moisture and mineral content varied by supplier, a pound and a half of it does not translate to a fixed weight of table or kosher salt.
- Moist sugarUnrefined or partly refined cane sugar with molasses still in it, closest today to a soft light brown sugar. It contributed colour and flavour to the cure as much as sweetness.
- "Prepare in the usual way"The phrase assumes a reader who has already met the book's general directions for dressing a tongue; this entry itself adds only that the tongue is soaked and dried before it goes into the pan.
- If you want pickled tongueUse a current recipe with a weighed nitrite or nitrate cure, a stated meat weight and refrigerated curing throughout.
- The priceThe book gives a probable cost of four to six shillings, a reminder that it was written for households buying whole offal from a butcher rather than pre-cured meat from a counter.
Pickled ox tongue was a fixture of the British cold table for centuries: a cured tongue keeps, slices neatly, and presents well pressed into a mould, which made it standard fare for buffets, breakfast sideboards and picnic hampers. Saltpetre had long been valued in such brines because it fixes the pink colour of cured meat and inhibits spoilage, though the reason why was not understood until the late nineteenth century, when the nitrate was shown to be reduced to nitrite by bacteria in the brine. Sal prunella, fused nitrate cast into cakes, sat in the same druggist's drawer as the saltpetre and was used for much the same purposes. The recipe's direction to keep the pickle and reboil it with fresh salt and sugar points to a household maintaining a standing brine for beef and tongues, in an era before commercial curers and cold storage took the job out of the domestic kitchen.