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Tongue and Prunes
Get a fresh beef tongue, parboil and skin it. Add one pound prunes, one pound raisins, one-quarter pound sugar, spices to the taste. Let it stew until perfectly well cooked. When nearly done, add one lemon.--Miss M. B. B. TO STEW DRIED APPLES, PEACHES, QUINCES, OR PEARS.
Take three pounds of dried fruit; wash it in lukewarm water, through three or four water, rubbing it hard. Pour on this five quarts boiling water; boil at least three hours. Just before taking form the fire, add two teacups nice brown sugar. Do not stir, except occasionally, to prevent sticking to the bottom. Try to cook the pieces of fruit separate, except the apples, which run through a colander and season with nutmeg. The other fruits need no seasoning.--Mrs. S.T.
Two entries run together here: a sweet-sour braised beef tongue, and a general method for stewing dried fruit. Both assume ingredients tougher and drier than what you will buy today.
- "Fresh" tongue means uncuredA fresh beef tongue is raw and unbrined, not the pink corned or smoked tongue sold in delis. A whole one runs 2.5 to 4 lb and serves six to eight.
- The hinge: skin it while hotParboil the tongue 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer, then lift it out and peel the thick outer membrane immediately. Once it cools the skin grips and will not come away cleanly.
- Liquid is unstatedThe stew needs enough water or light stock to just cover the tongue and fruit. Keep it at a low simmer for another hour to hour and a half, until a skewer slides through the thickest part with no resistance.
- "Spices to the taste"For this style, cinnamon, cloves and allspice, with perhaps a bay leaf. Start with a teaspoon of cinnamon and a scant quarter teaspoon of cloves for a whole tongue and adjust at the end.
- Prunes and the lemonBuy pitted prunes; dried plums in this period were generally sold with the stones in. The lemon goes in near the end as thin slices or juice, and it is doing real work, cutting a pound of prunes plus a pound of raisins plus sugar.
- A teacupA nineteenth-century teacup is usually reckoned at about three-quarters of a cup, which would make the two teacups of brown sugar roughly 1.5 cups; the book does not define the measure here.
- Three hours is for old-style dried fruitHome-dried apples and peaches of this period were typically dried much harder than what you buy now. Modern dried fruit is partially moist and will usually soften in 30 to 45 minutes; five quarts of water to 3 lb of fruit will also give you soup rather than stewed fruit. Start with about half that water and add more as needed.
- The washing still mattersRubbing hard through several changes of lukewarm water removed grit and orchard dust from home-dried fruit. With commercial fruit a single rinse is enough, though unsulfured dried apples still benefit from a soak.
- Run through a colanderThat means pressing the cooked apples through as a purée, the job now done by a food mill or sieve. The other fruits are meant to stay in pieces, which is why the pot is barely stirred.
Sweet-sour meat cooked with dried fruit is one of the oldest surviving medieval habits in European cookery, and it came to American tables from more than one direction: the English tradition of spiced, sugared and fruited meat dishes, and the German and Central European kitchens where braised tongue with prunes and raisins is still standard. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is credited recipe by recipe to initials and married names, from a period when a household buying or slaughtering beef dealt with the whole animal rather than selected cuts. The dried-fruit stew that follows belongs to the same economy: apples, peaches, quinces and pears were sliced and dried in quantity in late summer and were a standard winter fruit before home canning became common, which is why the recipe assumes hours of boiling to bring them back.