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Jellied Tongue
Take the tongue from the glass jar in which it comes, cut into thin slices. Make a jelly by soaking a tablespoonful of granulated gelatin in a quarter cup of cold water and then dissolving it in a cup of boiling water, in which also dissolve a cube of beef bouillon and flavor with a teaspoonful of lemon juice, pepper and salt. Strain. Put the tongue in a shallow mold and when your jelly begins to set pour it over the tongue. When ready to serve, turn onto a platter and garnish with slices of sweet pickled cucumbers.
A cold aspic built on one envelope of gelatin and a bouillon cube — quick to assemble, but the setting window is the part that decides whether it works.
- Pour at the right momentThe instruction to wait until the jelly "begins to set" is the hinge. Poured hot, it floats the tongue slices and slides off them; poured when syrupy and just thickening (about 45 minutes in the refrigerator, or a few minutes in a bowl of ice water with stirring), it clings and suspends the meat.
- The gelatin measureA tablespoon of granulated gelatin is one standard envelope, about ¼ oz or 7 g. Set into only 1¼ cups of liquid it gives a firm, sliceable jelly that will unmold cleanly — softer than that and it will not hold a shape on a platter.
- Sourcing the tongueJarred ready-cooked tongue has effectively disappeared from grocery shelves. A fresh or brined ox tongue needs simmering until a skewer slides in easily — roughly 2½ to 3½ hours for a 3 lb tongue — then the skin must be peeled off while it is still hot, or it grips. Thin-sliced deli ham or corned beef is a reasonable stand-in.
- SaltA bouillon cube, a brined tongue and added salt will stack up fast. Taste the dissolved liquid before adding any salt at all; cold jelly tastes less salty than warm broth, so aim slightly assertive but not more.
- Strain, and whyStraining catches undissolved gelatin grains and cube sediment, which otherwise show as cloudy specks. For a clear aspic, also skim any foam and avoid stirring air in once the gelatin has dissolved.
- Chilling and unmoldingAllow at least 4 hours in the refrigerator, longer for a deep mold. To turn it out, dip the mold in hot water for five to ten seconds, loosen the edge with a thin knife, and invert onto a chilled wet platter so the jelly can be nudged into position.
- Yield and servingWith only 1¼ cups of jelly plus the sliced tongue, this suits a small shallow mold and would serve perhaps three or four as a lunch or supper dish. Keep it refrigerated until the moment it goes to table; aspic slumps quickly in a warm room.
- The garnish"Sweet pickled cucumbers" means sweet pickle slices of the bread-and-butter or sweet-gherkin type. Sliced thin and laid around the platter they supply the acid the dish needs — a sharper cornichon works just as well.
Jellied dishes like this one belong to the era when gelatin came in a paper envelope rather than a calf's foot, and cold molded meats were, by most accounts, a favored answer to hot-weather entertaining. Granulated gelatin, commercially available in America from the 1890s onward, put aspic within reach of any cook with a stove and an icebox, and books of this stripe — cooling menus, minimal cooking, an "Emergency Shelf" of jars and cubes — leaned on it heavily. Tongue itself was thoroughly ordinary butcher's meat in 1930, cheap and much admired cold, and the ready-cooked jarred version the recipe assumes was a normal grocery item. Its near-total vanishing from American shelves probably says more about a changing squeamishness toward offal than about the meat, which is still sold by butchers and is still, sliced thin and set in a savory jelly, very good eating.