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Tongues, Sheep's, Salted
Wash half a dozen sheep's tongues, and rub into each one a tea-spoonful of moist sugar, a table-spoonful of salt, and a few drops of strong vinegar or lemon-juice. Let them lie for five days. Put them into a saucepan with as much boiling water as will cover them. Let them boil, then draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, and simmer them gently until tender. Take off the skin, trim the roots neatly, and split the tongues in halves. Arrange them in a circle round a dish, and garnish with parsley. Time to simmer, about an hour. Probable cost, 4d. each. Sufficient for a breakfast or supper dish.
A five-day dry cure followed by a gentle simmer, from an era when cold tongue was ordinary breakfast food. Everything here still works, but the cure needs to happen in the refrigerator rather than in a cool larder.
- Peel while hotThe skin slips off cleanly only while the tongues are still steaming; once cooled it clings and tears the meat. Lift them out one at a time, hold with a cloth, and pull the skin from the tip backwards, then trim the gristly root end.
- Cure coldRub the tongues, put them in a covered non-reactive dish, and keep them at refrigerator temperature (below 40F) for the five days, turning them daily in the liquid that draws out. The original assumed a cold larder, and a modern kitchen at room temperature is not a substitute.
- Moist sugarVictorian "moist sugar" is unrefined soft sugar, closest to today's light brown sugar. A teaspoonful per tongue is for flavour and colour, not preservation.
- No curing saltsThere is no saltpetre or nitrite here, so the meat will cook to a pale grey-brown rather than the pink of commercially cured tongue. That is correct for this recipe and not a fault.
- Rinse before boilingA tablespoonful of salt per tongue leaves the surface heavily seasoned. Rinse well and start in fresh boiling water, or the cooking liquid and the meat both come out too salty.
- "Draw to the side of the fire"On a range this means moving the pan off the hottest spot to hold it just below a boil. On a modern hob, bring to the boil then drop to the lowest setting that keeps the water barely trembling; a hard boil toughens the muscle.
- TimingSheep's tongues are small, so the stated hour is plausible, but 1 to 1 1/2 hours is more usual. Test with a skewer at the thickest part: it should meet no resistance.
- Yield and servingSix tongues split in half serve three or four as a cold breakfast or supper dish. They are best pressed under a weighted plate as they cool if you want neat slices, and they keep three or four days refrigerated.
Sheep's tongues were among the cheapest things a butcher sold, which is why Cassell's can quote fourpence each and still call the result a supper dish fit for the table. Cold cured tongue belonged to a pattern of Victorian eating that has largely disappeared: a breakfast and supper table laid with sliced cold meats prepared days in advance, requiring no cooking at the moment of serving and no ice. Ox tongue, pressed and sold whole, survived into the twentieth century as a deli staple, while the smaller sheep's tongues faded with the general retreat from offal in British and American kitchens. The five-day salt-and-sugar rub described here is the domestic, small-scale version of the same dry-cure logic used for bacon and hams, scaled down to something a household could turn out of a single dish.