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Tongue Ramequins
1 cupful diced cooked tongue I firm lettuce 2 pickled walnuts I hard cooked egg Seasoning of salt and pepper Some chopped aspic jelly Chop, the tongue, hard cooked egg, crisp lettuce leaves, and walnuts; then mix them together, seasoning them with a little salt and pepper. Divide into white china ramequins and decorate the top with chopped aspic jelly.
Serve very cold.
An assembly job rather than a cooked dish: everything depends on the quality of the tongue and the sharpness of the pickled walnuts. The only real work is the aspic.
- Ramequins here means the dish, not the cheeseIn this period a ramequin (ramekin) is the small individual china dish, and the recipe specifies "white china". Any small straight-sided dish will serve.
- Cooked tongueThe recipe assumes cold cooked tongue already to hand. Deli-sliced pickled or smoked beef tongue, cut into small dice, is the practical substitute; roughly 6 oz should give a cupful. Lambs' tongues are hard to find now.
- Pickled walnutsGreen English walnuts pickled in spiced malt vinegar, sold in jars and still made in Britain. They are black, soft and intensely tangy, and there is no true equivalent wo chopped cornichons plus a few drops of walnut ketchup or Worcestershire come closest in effect, though not in flavour.
- Chopped aspic jellyAspic is clarified savoury stock set with gelatine, turned out and chopped into glittering fragments with a wet knife. Set it firm a scant tablespoon of powdered gelatine to a cup of well-flavoured beef or veal stock and chill it thoroughly before chopping, or it smears.
- Dress the lettuce at the last minuteShredded lettuce weeps once salted. Chop and fold it in just before filling the dishes, or the mixture will sit in a puddle.
- SeasoningTongue is already salted and the walnuts bring vinegar, so taste before adding any salt. Pepper generously; the mixture is served cold, which mutes everything.
- Yield and servingFills three or four small ramekins as a first course or light lunch dish. Chill at least an hour; thin brown bread and butter suits it.
Cold tongue was a standby of the period larder: a whole ox tongue could be simmered, pressed under a weight and eaten in slices for days, and household books carried ideas for using up the last of it. This recipe belongs to that economy -- a cupful of dice, a hard-boiled egg and some lettuce, lifted into a company dish by two luxuries in miniature, pickled walnuts and chopped aspic. Pickled walnuts, made from green nuts gathered before the shell hardens, were a long-established English store-cupboard item and appear alongside cold beef and tongue. The chopped-aspic garnish reflects professional kitchen practice of the day filtering into domestic cookery: chilled jelly cut into sparkling crumbs was a common way to finish a cold plate.