Tongue Toast
Take cold tongue that has been well boiled, mince fine, mix it well with cream or a little milk, if there is no cream. Add the beaten yolk of one egg and give it a simmer over the fire. Toast nicely some thin slices of stale bread and, having buttered, lay them in a flat dish, that has been heated, then cover the toast with the tongue and serve up directly.--Mrs. S.
A leftovers dish from the days when a whole beef tongue was boiled for the sideboard and the remains had to reappear at breakfast or supper. The recipe gives no quantities, so work by eye.
- Working proportionsAbout 2 cups finely minced cooked tongue to 1/2 cup cream and one egg yolk makes four generous slices of toast. The mixture should be moist and spoonable, not soupy; add cream a little at a time.
- The hinge: do not let it boilOnce the yolk goes in, keep the pan below a true boil, around 170-180F. The original says "give it a simmer over the fire," but a hard boil will scramble the yolk and break the sauce into grains and liquid.
- Sourcing tongueWhole beef tongue is an order-ahead item at most butchers, and needs 3 hours or so at a bare simmer with aromatics, then peeling while hot. Cooked, sliced tongue from a delicatessen works perfectly well here and is the practical route.
- MincingChop by hand to a coarse mince rather than using a food processor, which turns cooked tongue to paste. The dish depends on some texture against the soft sauce.
- SeasoningThe recipe names no seasoning at all, presumably relying on however the tongue was cured or boiled. Taste before serving and expect to add salt, black pepper, and possibly a little mustard or cayenne, none of which the recipe mentions but all of which suit it.
- Stale bread and the hot dishDay-old bread toasts dry and firm and will not collapse under the sauce. Warming the serving dish matters more than it sounds: cream sauce on a cold plate chills and thickens within a minute, which is why the instruction ends "serve up directly."
- YieldServes two as a light supper or four as a first course.
Tongue was standard household meat in nineteenth-century Virginia, not a curiosity: boiled, pressed, and served cold in thin slices, it stretched across several meals, and books like Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) devote a run of receipts to using up what remained. This one belongs to a whole family of "toasts" and "savouries" built on the same logic -- minced or potted meat bound with cream and egg, spread on buttered toast, and eaten at breakfast, high tea, or as a light supper dish. Marion Cabell Tyree compiled the book from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why so many entries end as this one does, with the abbreviated signature of the woman who sent it in and the assumption that any reader would already know how to boil a tongue.