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SHEEP'S TONGUES (au Gratin)
Sheep's tongues may be bought at the tripe shop either fresh or partially boiled. If fresh, they will need to be soaked in salt and water for a couple of hours, and then boiled for two hours. If they have been partially boiled, they will not require to be cooked more than half or three-quarters of an hour, or they may be eaten cold. Boil three or four tongues in as much stock as will cover them, and add a bunch of sweet herbs, a carrot, an onion stuck with two cloves, and a little salt and pepper. When the skin will peel off, take them up and skin them. Make as much good veal forcemeat as will cover the bottom of the dish on which the tongues are to be served. Mix a little minced bacon with this, and moisten with the raw yolks of two eggs and a little of the hot liquor in which the tongues were boiled. Make it hot, spread it on a hot dish, drain off any particles of fat that may float on the surface, and lay the sheep's tongues, boiled, skinned, and split in halves, on the forcemeat. Strain the gravy, pour a little of it over the tongues, and serve the rest in a tureen. Sometimes the forcemeat is soaked in the liquor and rubbed through a hair sieve, and the tongues are gently stewed in the sauce for half an hour, then served on a hot dish with the sauce poured over and round them. Time to boil the tongues, two hours. Probable cost, 4d. each. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian offal dish that survives well: poached lamb tongues on a bed of veal forcemeat, with the cooking liquor as sauce. Most of what needs translating is sourcing and the handling of the forcemeat.
- Peel them hotThe single instruction that decides the dish is taking the tongues up while the skin still lifts. Once they cool the outer membrane clings and tears the meat; lift each one out with tongs, hold it in a cloth and strip the skin from the tip back.
- Sourcing"Sheep's tongues" means lamb or mutton tongues, sold by halal and Turkish butchers, some farm shops and online offal suppliers; a tripe shop is no longer an option in most towns. Fresh ones weigh 60-90 g each, so three or four is a modest dish. Pre-cooked or brined tongues, the book's "partially boiled", still turn up vacuum-packed and need only reheating.
- The two-hour boil is rightTongue is dense muscle laced with connective tissue and genuinely wants 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer for lamb. Do not let it gallop; a rolling boil shreds the surface. A pressure cooker does the same job in about 25 minutes at high pressure if you would rather.
- Veal forcemeatA period forcemeat is minced veal (or veal and suet) bound with breadcrumbs, lemon zest, herbs and egg. Buy veal mince, or substitute pork or chicken mince, and reckon on 300-350 g to cover a serving dish. The "little minced bacon" is about 50 g of fatty streaky, finely chopped.
- Raw yolks, and cooking themThe yolks are there to bind. "Make it hot" means cook the forcemeat through, not warm it: spread it in a buttered dish and give it 20-25 minutes at 350F/180C, or poach it gently in a pan, until it is firm and reads 165F/74C. Simply heating it on the stovetop for a minute leaves raw egg and raw veal.
- "Au gratin" without a gratinDespite the title there is no browning step. If you want the crust the name implies, scatter fine breadcrumbs over the assembled dish and pass it under the grill for two or three minutes before saucing.
- Hair sieveA fine horsehair sieve; such sieves are usually said to have been preferred because metal was thought to discolour delicate mixtures. Any fine nylon or stainless sieve does the alternative version, where the forcemeat is loosened with stock and pushed through to make a smooth sauce for stewing the tongues.
- Onion stuck with clovesTwo whole cloves pressed into a peeled onion, which perfumes the stock and can be fished out whole. The "bunch of sweet herbs" is a bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf.
- Yield and costFive or six as the book says, but as a first course or part of a larger meal rather than a modern main. The 4d. per tongue is a reminder of how cheap offal was; it is now a specialist purchase and priced accordingly.
Tongue in all its forms was a staple of the nineteenth-century English table, and sheep's tongues occupied the cheap end of it: small, plentiful, and bought from the tripe shop rather than the butcher, alongside trotters, chitterlings and cow-heel. The veal forcemeat base and the enriched cooking liquor are what raise a fourpenny ingredient into something fit for a dinner course. The alternative given at the end, forcemeat sieved into the stock to make a sauce, is a period liaison technique, thickening with pounded meat rather than flour.