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Ox Tongue, Russian
The tongue should be soaked in cold water for forty-eight hours, changing the water several times. It should then be boiled very gently for five hours, or until quite tender. Then take off the skin, and put a paper frill round the root end of the tongue.
A cured tongue, freshened, simmered and dressed for the cold table. Almost everything that can go wrong here happens in the first two steps: too little soaking and it is inedibly salty, too hard a boil and the meat turns dry and stringy.
- What kind of tongueThe forty-eight hour soak only makes sense for a salted or pickled ox tongue, which is what a Victorian kitchen would have bought. A fresh tongue needs no soaking at all. Cured tongues are still sold by butchers and by mail order, usually 3 to 4 lb trimmed.
- Soak in the refrigeratorThe original assumes a cold larder. Do the soaking in the fridge or in a cool place under 40F, changing the water three or four times, and discard the water each time. Two days on the counter in a warm kitchen is not the same thing.
- "Boiled very gently" means do not boilBring it up to temperature and then hold the water at a bare shiver, around 180F, with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil for five hours tightens the muscle fibres and gives you a dense, dry tongue no amount of resting will fix.
- Judging donenessFive hours is a guide for a large cured tongue; smaller ones can be tender in three. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance and the small bones at the root pull away cleanly.
- Peel while hotLift the tongue out and skin it immediately. The rough outer membrane strips off in sheets while it is steaming and becomes almost impossible to remove once it cools. Trim the gristle, fat and small bones from the root end at the same time.
- If you want it to slice neatlyThis recipe finishes with the tongue whole and frilled, so it was meant to be served as it is. A common alternative for a cold tongue is to curl it into a round tin or basin, cover with a plate and weight it with something heavy overnight in the fridge; it sets in the shape of the tin and cuts into clean thin slices, though you then lose the frilled root the recipe calls for.
- The paper frillA cut-paper cuff wrapped round the root, purely decorative, hiding the untidy trimmed end on the serving dish. Kitchen-paper frills are still sold for lamb cutlets and crown roasts, or you can cut one from a folded strip of parchment.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb cured tongue yields roughly 2 lb of sliceable meat, enough for eight to ten as a cold plate with mustard, horseradish or a sharp pickle.
Ox tongue was a cornerstone of the Victorian cold table: cured in brine by the butcher, boiled at home, pressed, and brought out for breakfast, suppers and buffets where a joint that sliced cleanly and kept for days was worth more than one served hot. The "Russian" label in nineteenth-century English cookery books is loose, and what it was meant to signal here is not clear from the entry itself. The book appears to assume you already know how to handle a tongue, and to be telling you only what makes this version different, which may be why the entry is so terse.