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Tongue, Boiled
If the tongue is dried, soak it for twelve hours; if taken fresh from the pickle, an hour or two will be sufficient. Put the tongue into cold water, and let it come slowly to the boil. Remove the scum carefully, and simmer the tongue gently until done enough. Its flavour will be improved if two or three large carrots and a large bunch of savoury herbs be added to the liquor after the scum is removed. When the tongue is quite tender, so that it can be easily probed with a small skewer, and so that the skin can be easily peeled off, take it up, remove the skin, and if it is to be eaten cold, pass a large carving fork through the root end, and by means of this fasten it on a board. Pass through the tip another and smaller fork, and before fixing it in the board draw the tongue straight. Let it remain untouched until quite cold, trim neatly, glaze it, and then wrap a nicely-cut frill of tissue paper round the root, which is a little unsightly. Garnish the dish with parsley. If to be eaten hot, take off the skin, wrap the tongue in a sheet of oiled paper, and put it in a little boiling liquor for a quarter of an hour before dishing it, to make it quite hot. Garnish the dish with Brussels sprouts, cauliflowers, dressed spinach, or any other vegetables, and send tomato or piquant sauce to table with it. Time, a large smoked tongue, four hours and a half; a small smoked tongue, two and a half to three hours; a large unsmoked tongue, three hours and a half; a small one, two to two and a half hours. Probable cost, 4s. 6d. to 6s. Sufficient for a breakfast, luncheon, or supper dish.
A straightforward long simmer, but two details decide the result: the tongue must never boil hard, and the skin must come off while it is still hot. Everything else is timing and presentation.
- Sourcing the tongueA whole beef tongue runs about 3 to 4 lb and is a butcher or ethnic-market item rather than a supermarket one. The "smoked" and "pickle" versions here are cured tongues; if you buy one already cured or corned, ask how salty it is, since modern brines vary widely.
- Soaking is about saltTwelve hours for a dried tongue and an hour or two for one straight from the brine is a desalting step, not a food-safety one. A fresh, uncured tongue needs no soaking at all, and the cooking liquid can then be seasoned properly.
- Never let it boilSlow to the boil, then a bare simmer at 180-190F with the surface barely moving. A rolling boil tightens the muscle and leaves it stringy no matter how long you cook it.
- Peel it hotThis is the hinge. The thick skin slips off in one or two sheets while the tongue is steaming; once it cools, the skin welds itself to the meat and has to be cut away with loss. Lift it out, hold it with a towel, split the skin at the tip and pull toward the root.
- Judge by feel, not the clockThe stated times, two to four and a half hours by size and cure, are still about right, but a skewer should meet no resistance at the thick root end. Internally that is around 195F, the same doneness logic as brisket.
- Pressing without the carving forksThe board-and-two-forks trick simply keeps a cold tongue straight for slicing. Easier now: curl it into a bowl or loaf tin just large enough to hold it, set a plate on top with a weight, and refrigerate overnight. It slices into neat rounds.
- GlazeGlaze here means brushing with reduced, cooled meat jelly from the cooking liquor, or a commercial aspic, to give a glossy skin. Strain and reduce a cup or two of the liquid; if the tongue was cured, taste before reducing, as salt concentrates fast.
- Reheating wholeThe oiled-paper wrap and quarter hour in liquor works, and foil does the same job. Do not simmer a peeled tongue for long to reheat it, or the surface frays.
- Yield and cost"Sufficient for a breakfast, luncheon, or supper dish" implies a whole tongue served cold in thin slices, enough for a family across several meals rather than a fixed number of covers. The recipe does not say how many it serves. At 4s. 6d. to 6s. it was a real outlay for a Victorian household, though one that stretched a long way.
Tongue was one of the great standbys of the Victorian cold table: it cured well, kept for days under a glaze, carved into uniform slices without waste, and could carry a household through breakfast, luncheon and supper. Cassell's treats it as a matter of routine, which is why the instructions dwell less on cooking than on making an awkward-shaped organ look presentable, the drawn-straight pressing, the trimmed edge, the paper frill hiding the root. Dried and pickled tongues are generally said to have been sold ready-cured by grocers and hung in larders, and the long soak suggests a saltiness likely beyond most modern brines, though that is inference rather than documented. The paper frill belongs to the same tradition as the frills still put on lamb cutlets and crown roasts, a garnish whose whole purpose is to conceal a cut end.