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Tongue Stanley
Some good white stock or sauce A few slices cold tongue Some poached eggs A few chopped pistachio Salt and pepper to season nuts Cut the slices of tongue half an inch in thickness, then trim them neat and round. Lay these rounds in small fireproof dishes, season with salt and pepper, place a poached egg on each piece of tongue, pour over some good white stock or sauce, heat in the oven, and serve decorated with chopped pistachio nuts.
A composed cold-meat dish that depends entirely on assembly and gentle reheating rather than cooking. The whole point is to warm it through without setting the egg yolks hard.
- The hinge: don't cook the eggs twiceThe poached eggs go on already cooked, with soft yolks. The recipe gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven for five to eight minutes is enough to warm the tongue and sauce, and longer than that firms the yolks and the dish loses its reason to exist. If the sauce goes on hot, less time still.
- "Fireproof dishes"In a book of casserole cookery this means small individual ovenproof dishes — ramekins, gratin dishes or shallow earthenware about 4 inches across. One per serving, sized so a round of tongue sits flat with a little room for sauce.
- White stock versus white sauceWhite stock is unbrowned veal or chicken stock, which will stay thin and pool in the dish. A white sauce here means a velouté made from that stock, thick enough to coat the egg. The sauce version is the better choice unless you want the tongue sitting in broth.
- Cold tongueThe original most likely assumes a pressed, brined ox tongue kept in the larder, which few kitchens have. Cooked whole tongue is sold at good butchers and delis; a thick-cut deli slice will not give you the half-inch round the recipe wants. Cut rounds with a plain cutter roughly the diameter of a poached egg.
- PistachiosBuy shelled, unsalted, unroasted nuts and chop them fine. Salted roasted pistachios overwhelm the mild tongue and pale sauce. Scatter them after the dish leaves the oven so they stay green and crisp.
- SeasoningBrined tongue is already salty. Season the sauce lightly, taste with a scrap of the tongue, and use white pepper if you care about the colour.
- YieldOne round of tongue and one egg per dish; count two per person for a light lunch, one as a first course. Everything except the poaching can be assembled ahead and the dishes warmed to order.
This belongs to the large genre of "cold meat recipes" — instructions for turning yesterday's boiled joint into something that could be sent to table in its own dish without looking like leftovers. A whole brined ox tongue and the individual fireproof dish are both at home in such cooking, which is why a book on casserole cookery includes a dish that is really only warmed through. The name follows the restaurant habit of attaching a proper name to a garnish rather than to a method; in classical French kitchen usage a dish "Stanley" is generally traced to a garnish of onion, mushroom and a trace of curry, and is often said to honour the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, though the version here has drifted well away from any such formula and keeps only the borrowed prestige of the name.