Boiled Tongue
Soak beef tongue over night in cold water. Cook in boiling water with one tablespoon lemon juice and one spoon vinegar, 5 cloves, 6 pepper corns and a little salt. Cook until tender. Leave in water until cold. Skin and serve in thin slices. Garnish with lemon cut thin and parsley.
A plain simmered tongue of the sort that once anchored a cold sideboard. The recipe assumes you know how long tongue takes and that you can find one; both are worth spelling out.
- Which tongue to buyAn overnight soak in cold water points to a cured (corned or pickled) tongue, where the purpose is to draw out excess salt. A fresh beef tongue needs no soaking at all, only a good rinse. Either will work here; adjust the added salt accordingly and taste the water before you commit.
- Size and timeA whole beef tongue runs 3 to 4 lb and needs 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, which toughens the meat and clouds the liquid. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance and the skin at the tip has begun to split.
- "One spoon vinegar"The original distinguishes a tablespoon of lemon juice from an unspecified "spoon" of vinegar. Read it as a tablespoon; the acid is there to brighten a fatty, mineral-tasting meat, not to pickle it.
- PeelingThis is the hinge. The rough outer skin slips off in one piece while the tongue is hot, and fights you once it is cold. Lift it out, run it under cold water briefly, slit the skin along the underside and peel it back, then return the peeled tongue to its cooled cooking liquid to firm up.
- Trimming the rootThe thick end carries gristle, small bones and glands that no amount of simmering will soften. Cut them away after peeling and before slicing.
- SlicingSlice thin and on a slant, working from the tip toward the root. Chilled tongue slices more cleanly than warm, which may be part of the reason for leaving it in the water until cold.
- Yield and servingA 3 lb tongue serves 8 to 10 as a cold cut. It keeps three or four days refrigerated in a little of its strained liquid, and is at its best with mustard, horseradish or a sharp green sauce alongside the lemon and parsley.
Tongue was often household economy rather than a delicacy: a relatively inexpensive cut, cooked once and eaten cold over several days as sandwich meat, supper dish and buffet centerpiece. Mrs. Wilson's cookery writing dates from around the First World War era, when American cooks were pressed hard on thrift and on using the whole animal. The overnight soak and the clove-and-peppercorn liquid are consistent with the older tradition of pickled tongue, cured in brine by the butcher and desalted at home, which may be why the salt in the pot is specified only as "a little." Lemon slices and parsley were a common garnish for cold sliced meat in this period.