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Sheep's Tongues, Stewed
Soak three sheep's tongues in salt and water for two hours, boil them in stock till the skin will peel off easily, and skin them. Let them get cold, then cut them into slices the third of an inch thick. Take half a pint of thick brown sauce nicely seasoned and flavoured. Dip the slices into this, and arrange them in a circle on a dish. Sprinkle finely-grated bread-crumbs thickly over them, pour a little oiled butter upon them, and brown them in the oven or before the fire. Pour the sauce into the centre of the circle, and garnish the dish with toasted sippets. If brown gravy is not at hand, it may be made as follows. Put half a pint of stock made from bones into a saucepan with a moderate-sized onion or two shallots, a scraped carrot, a bunch of parsley, a clove, and three or four outer sticks of celery. Simmer all gently together for an hour. Strain the gravy, add pepper and salt if required, thicken it with a little brown thickening, stir a glass of port into it, and it will be ready for use. Time to boil the tongues, two hours. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d. each. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian way of serving cheap offal as a hot entrée: the tongues are boiled and skinned, then sliced, sauced, crumbed and browned. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the measures and terms need translating.
- Peel while hotThe skin lifts off cleanly the moment the tongues come out of the stock and becomes very stubborn as they cool. Skin them at once, holding each one in a cloth, then let the peeled tongues go cold before slicing.
- Sourcing the tonguesLamb tongues (sold as such, or as sheep's tongues) come from halal and Middle Eastern butchers, Latin American markets and some farm shops, often frozen. Each weighs roughly 4-6 oz; three make a modest dish for four.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so a scant 1¼ US cups of brown sauce, and the same again of stock for the gravy variant.
- A glass of portA wine glass in this period is about 2 fl oz, not a modern tumblerful. Add it at the end and let it simmer a minute so the alcohol softens.
- Brown thickeningA pre-made flour browned in butter or fat until nut-coloured, kept in a jar; a plain brown roux does the same work. Whisk it in off the boil to avoid lumps.
- Oiled butterButter melted until it runs clear as oil; clarified butter is the nearest modern equivalent. It browns the crumbs without the milk solids scorching.
- Browning"before the fire" is the equivalent of a modern broiler or grill; in the oven use a hot oven and watch closely, as the crumbs need only a few minutes to colour rather than burn. The tongue is already cooked, so this is purely for the crust.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, used as a garnish round the rim of the dish.
- Chilling for neat slicesCold tongue slices to a third of an inch far more cleanly than warm. Pressing the tongues under a plate and weight in the refrigerator overnight makes the job easier still.
Sheep's and lambs' tongues were among the cheapest animal foods in a late-Victorian market - the "probable cost, 4d. to 6d. each" puts three of them at a shilling to eighteenpence - and Cassell's, aimed squarely at households running on a budget with some pretension to style, gives them the full treatment of a made dish: sauced, crumbed, browned, ringed with sippets. A crumb crust and a sauce in the centre of a circle turned humble material into something that could be carried to table. Port and a bone-stock gravy thickened with browned flour were the ordinary flavourings of English brown sauce in this period, before the commercial extracts and bottled sauces of the twentieth century displaced them. Tongue of all kinds is generally said to have faded from British and American home cooking after the Second World War, though salted ox tongue lingered longest at the cold table.