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Tongue, Baked
Take a tongue fresh from the pickle, wash and soak it, and put it in a dish just large enough for it. Put little pieces of butter here and there upon it, cover with a common crust of flour and water, and bake in a moderate oven until it is quite tender. Remove the furred coating or skin, and fasten the tongue down to a piece of board by sticking one or two strong skewers through the root and one through the tip so as to hold the tongue in an erect and elegant form until it is quite cold. If to be eaten cold, glaze it, trim the root, put a paper frilling round it to hide its unsightliness, and serve garnished with parsley. If to be eaten hot, serve the tongue on a hot dish with Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, or other vegetables round it. Time to bake, three to four hours, according to size. Probable cost, 4s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for a luncheon, supper, or breakfast dish.
A Victorian sideboard dish: a cured ox tongue baked slowly under a flour-and-water shell, then set in a curved shape as it cools. The method still works, but almost every step assumes knowledge the entry does not spell out.
- "Fresh from the pickle"This means a tongue that has been sitting in brine, not a fresh one. Ask a butcher for a cured (pickled or corned) ox tongue; the pink colour and salty flavour come from the brine, and an uncured tongue baked this way will taste flat.
- Soaking is not optionalThe entry calls for washing and soaking because a tongue out of a brine tub carries a good deal of salt, and older brines were often stronger than the mild cures usually sold now. A modern cured tongue will generally want a few hours in cold water, changed once or twice; a heavily salted one, longer. Taste the soaking water if unsure.
- The crust is a lid, not pastry"A common crust of flour and water" is huff paste, a stiff flour-and-water dough used to seal the dish so the meat steams in its own juices. It is discarded, not eaten. A tight-fitting lid with a sheet of foil crimped under it does the same job.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is 350F. For a three- to four-hour covered bake, the lower end of moderate is safer against drying: 325F suits a large tongue.
- Judging doneIgnore the clock and test the tip and the root: a skewer should slide in with no resistance, and the skin should peel away in sheets. An undercooked tongue is rubbery and the skin will cling.
- Skin it hotThe single step that decides whether this works. Peel the furred outer skin the moment the tongue comes out of the oven, while it is too hot to hold comfortably; once cool it grips and you will end up gouging the meat.
- Setting the shapeThe skewers-and-board arrangement holds the tongue in the upright, curved form the entry calls "erect and elegant". If you would rather not do that, the peeled tongue can instead be curled into a straight-sided bowl or small cake tin just big enough to hold it, weighted and chilled overnight; that gives a pressed round rather than the shape described here, but it slices cleanly.
- Glazing"Glaze it" means brushing with reduced meat stock or aspic that sets to a shine, not with a sugar glaze. Cold tongue is fine served plain if you would rather skip it.
- Cost and yield4s 6d to 6s was a real outlay in a Victorian household, not a cheap cut. The entry gives no number of servings, only that it suffices for a luncheon, supper or breakfast dish; a whole ox tongue sliced cold will stretch a good deal further than the same tongue carved hot with vegetables.
Cold tongue was a fixture of the Victorian and Edwardian breakfast and supper table, where a household kept cured meats on the sideboard to be sliced at will rather than cooked to order. Tongue suited that pattern: it was bought already in brine from the butcher, took a long unattended cooking, and was better made a day ahead. The paper frill and the parsley in this entry belong to the same logic as the skewered arch "in an erect and elegant form" -- a cut with an awkward root end and a coarse skin had to be dressed into something presentable enough to stand on a buffet. Cassell's is arranged as an alphabetical dictionary for middle-class households, and gives a price range for its dishes throughout.