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Smoked Tongue Boiled
Soak the tongue in cold water over night. In the morning cover with fresh water; bring to the boiling point; then simmer gently for four hours or until tender. When thoroughly cooked, remove the tongue; skin it, trim off the smoked parts and serve surrounded with mashed potatoes and garnished with parsley. 3 pounds veal 1 pound salt pork 6 soda crackers
A straightforward cured-meat preparation, with one oddity: the three ingredients printed at the end belong to a different recipe. This was a loose-leaf book whose pages were meant to be shuffled, and a line of type from a neighbouring veal loaf has ended up here.
- Ignore the trailing ingredientsVeal, salt pork and soda crackers have nothing to do with a boiled tongue; they look like the makings of a veal loaf of some kind. The tongue recipe needs only the tongue and water.
- Skin it hotThis is the hinge. The thick outer skin peels away cleanly while the tongue is still steaming and clings stubbornly once it cools. Lift it from the liquid, slit the skin lengthwise and pull it off before doing anything else.
- The overnight soak still mattersSmoked and brine-cured tongue carries a great deal of salt. A night in cold water, changed once if you think of it, keeps the finished meat from being inedibly salty. Discard the soaking water rather than cooking in it.
- Simmer, do not boilA hard boil toughens the muscle and makes it stringy. Hold the water at a bare tremble, barely moving, for the whole four hours.
- Time by size, not the clockFour hours suits a beef tongue of about 3 to 4 lb. A small veal or lamb tongue is done in half that. Test by pushing a skewer into the thickest part near the root: it should meet no resistance.
- SourcingWhole smoked beef tongue is no longer a supermarket item; look to a halal or kosher butcher, a Latin American market, or order it in. Fresh (uncured) tongue is easier to find, but it needs no soaking and will taste quite different.
- "Trim off the smoked parts"Most likely the dark, dry, heavily smoked root end and any gristle at the base, which stay tough. Cut back until you reach clean pale meat.
- Serving and yieldA 3 lb tongue serves six to eight. Slice thinly on a slight diagonal, starting at the tip. It is equally good cold, pressed under a weight overnight and sliced for sandwiches.
Tongue was standard household meat well into the twentieth century, when nose-to-tail butchery was not a philosophy but simply how an animal was sold. Smoked and cured tongues kept far better than fresh meat without refrigeration, which is why they turn up so often in books of this period as a cold cut for supper, picnics and sandwich fillings, as well as hot with potatoes. Mrs. Fryer's book belongs to a vogue for loose-leaf cookery: printed sheets sold in a binder so the cook could add clippings and her own cards, and rearrange them to suit her kitchen. Why a line of veal-loaf ingredients sits at the foot of this page is not clear -- a compositor's or transcription slip is as likely an explanation as anything to do with the format.