Home › The Principles of Cookery › Tongue, to Serve a Cut
Tongue, to Serve a Cut
A pretty dish may be made from a tongue which has been cut into and partially used. Cut the tongue into thin round slices, and arrange-them in a circle on a dish, each piece overlapping the next. Garnish the sides of the dish with a border of chopped parsley. If liked, the slices may be lightly glazed. Some cooks warm the slices in a little nicely-flavoured brown sauce, and serve them hot with the sauce poured over them.
This is a leftovers dish: the entry assumes a whole boiled or braised tongue already cooked, pressed and partly carved. The work is entirely in the slicing and the arrangement.
- Slice it coldTongue generally cuts more cleanly when well chilled, and the slices should be thin enough to be faintly translucent at the edge. Warm tongue tends to tear and the round slices lose their shape on the dish.
- Work from the thick endThe tip of a tongue is narrow and fibrous; the rounds that look best come from the butt. Reserve the ragged tip and any trimmings for a sandwich filling or a potted paste rather than trying to fit them into the circle.
- "Glazed" means meat glaze, not sugarVictorian glaze is stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold, brushed on in a thin coat for shine. A concentrated jellied stock, or a clear aspic made from good stock, gives the same effect; commercial glace de viande diluted slightly works too.
- Brown sauceIn Victorian cookery this generally means a brown roux with brown stock, reduced and strained, at its richest an espagnole or demi-glace. A modern quick version built on reduced beef stock with a little tomato and Madeira is closer in flavour than any packet gravy.
- If serving hot, warm onlyThe tongue is already fully cooked. Bring the sauce to a simmer, take it off the heat and let the slices stand in it for a minute or two; boiling cooked tongue a second time makes it dry and grainy.
- SaltTongue is usually brined before cooking and is salty on its own account. Season the sauce lightly and taste only after the meat has been in it.
- GarnishChopped parsley should be washed, squeezed dry in a cloth and chopped fine, or it will bleed green onto the dish. Cornichons, pickled walnuts or a spoonful of Cumberland sauce sit well alongside if you want more than the parsley border.
- YieldAs a rough guide, an overlapping ring on a dish of about 10 inches might take a dozen or so slices, enough for perhaps four as a cold luncheon plate with salad, or more as part of a larger cold table. The recipe itself specifies no quantities.
Boiled ox tongue was a fixture of the British cold table for most of the nineteenth century: cheap, keeping well, and easy to press into a neat round in a purpose-made tongue press or a cake tin with a weight on top. That made it ideal for the sideboard, where it was carved for breakfast, supper and cold suppers over several days — which is exactly the situation this entry addresses. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery takes up the question of what to do with a joint that has been "cut into", because a household that could afford large cuts of meat could not afford to let them look tired. Glazing was the standard trick: a coat of set meat jelly restored the gloss of a freshly cut surface and may also have acted as a light seal against the air.