Tongue Salad
Beef tongue, boiled, makes a very good salad served with a mayonnaise.
The original is a one-line suggestion rather than a method, so the work is all in the tongue itself. Everything depends on cooking it long enough and peeling it at the right moment.
- Peel it hotThe rough outer skin slips off cleanly only while the tongue is still steaming. Let it cool in the pot and the membrane sets tight; you will end up carving it away and losing meat with it.
- Fresh or curedA butcher's fresh beef tongue and a brine-cured ("corned" or pickled) tongue were both sold in 1911, and the recipe does not say which. Cured tongue is pinker and much saltier — soak it several hours and cook it in unsalted water.
- Cooking time"Boiled" means a bare simmer for 2.5 to 3.5 hours for a 3 lb tongue, until a skewer slides into the thickest part without resistance. A hard boil toughens the muscle and clouds the broth. Aromatics — onion, bay, peppercorns, a carrot — cost nothing and matter here, since the meat is eaten cold.
- Press and chillOnce peeled and trimmed of gristle at the root, cool the tongue under a light weight on a plate so it firms into a block. Cold, firm tongue slices thin and cleanly; warm tongue shreds.
- Slice against the grainCut thin slices on a slight angle across the muscle fibres, then cut into strips or dice for a salad. Thick slabs cut with the grain are chewy no matter how well cooked.
- The mayonnaiseA 1911 mayonnaise was made by hand from raw yolks and oil. Bottled mayonnaise works, but thin it with a spoonful of vinegar or lemon juice and a little mustard — tongue is rich and needs sharpness to cut it.
- Building the saladEstes leaves the rest to the cook. Diced boiled potato, celery, capers, cornichons or pickled beet all suit it; dress the tongue while it is cool but not fridge-cold so it takes the seasoning.
- YieldThe original gives no quantity. As a rough guide, a 3 lb tongue yields somewhere around 2 lb of trimmed meat, enough for perhaps six to eight servings as a main salad, more as part of a cold table.
Good Things to Eat (1911) was written by Rufus Estes, born enslaved in Tennessee, who cooked for the Pullman Company's private railcars and later for the Chicago subsidiary of U.S. Steel. Terse entries like this one are typical of the book: it was written by a professional for readers assumed to know how to boil a joint of meat, so the note supplies only the idea. Beef tongue was cheap, plentiful and a fixture of the cold larder — boiled, pressed, and sliced for sandwiches and buffet platters. Its placement among the salads reflects the early twentieth-century American enthusiasm for mayonnaise-bound salads of almost any cold cooked thing, a fashion that also produced the chicken, lobster and potato salads the book carries elsewhere.