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Sheep's Tongues in Aspic
Soak 6 sheep's tongues in cold water for 2 or 3 hours. Boil until tender enough to remove the skin. Put them in a stewpan with 6 cloves, a blade of mace, a few springs of parsley, half a small onion and a small carrot sliced, a heaping teaspoonful of salt, and 3 or 4 peppercorns. Barely cover with boiling water and cook slowly until very tender. Let them cool in the liquor. When cold take them out and drain them; lay them in an oval dish or mould with the rootends, which should be nicely trimmed, together in the centre, and the tips toward the ends of the dish, which should not be much larger than necessary for the tongues. Pour the aspic over, letting it just cover the tops, and put where it will stiffen and get very cold. To serve, turn out on a platter of the same shape, garnish with springs of parsley or cress alternated with small round beets boiled and peeled, and slice very thin.
A cold pressed entrée of the sort that carried a Victorian buffet or supper table. The work is all in the poaching and the setting; the assembly is a matter of packing the mould tightly enough that the finished loaf slices clean.
- The aspic itself is not in this recipeThe instruction to "pour the aspic over" assumes a separate savoury jelly, made and clarified elsewhere in the book. Plan on about 3 cups of well-flavoured stock jelly for six tongues in a snug mould — enough gelatin that it sets firm at refrigerator temperature and holds when unmoulded, roughly 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin per 2 cups of liquid if your stock is not naturally gelatinous.
- Sourcing lamb tonguesSheep's (lamb) tongues are a special order from a halal butcher, a Mexican carniceria or a whole-animal butcher; they run 3-5 oz each, so six make a small loaf. Veal or beef tongue can take the same treatment, though a beef tongue is several times the weight of the six lamb tongues here and neither will arrange in the neat radiating pattern the recipe is after.
- Skin them while hotThe first boil exists only to loosen the skin. Give them 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer, then peel while they are still hot — the tough outer membrane strips away easily then and grips stubbornly once cooled. Trim the root ends and any gristle at that stage.
- The second cookingAfter the aromatics go in, expect 1 to 1½ hours at a slow simmer, never a rolling boil, until a skewer meets no resistance. Cooling them in the liquor is not optional padding: it keeps them moist and lets them absorb the spice.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg; one "blade" is a piece perhaps an inch across, about 1/4 teaspoon ground. It is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg, and appears often in English cookery of this period.
- Mould sizeThe direction that the dish be "not much larger than necessary" is the hinge of the whole thing. Slack space fills with jelly, and a jelly-heavy loaf collapses under the knife. Pack the tongues tight, root ends meeting at the centre, and use a loaf pan or oval terrine that just holds them.
- Setting timeChill at least 6 hours and preferably overnight. To unmould, dip the outside of the mould in hot water for 10 seconds and invert onto a chilled platter.
- Keeping and servingServes six to eight as a cold first course, sliced thin with mustard or a sharp pickle. Keep it refrigerated and eat within three days; a jellied meat left standing at room temperature on a buffet is the one real risk in this dish.
Cold moulded meats in savoury jelly were a fixture of the late nineteenth-century entree course, when a dish that could be made a day ahead, turned out whole and sliced at the table solved the problem of serving many people. Aspic did double duty as garnish and as a seal against air. Sheep's tongues were cheap, uniform in size and tender, which suited the geometric patterning of Victorian table arrangement: the radiating root ends at the centre, the beets and cress alternated around the platter. The taste for such dishes faded in the twentieth century with changing fashion and the decline of offal cookery in Anglo-American kitchens, though pressed tongue survives in delicatessen form and in French charcuterie.