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Lamb's Tongue Salad
One pint of pickled lambs's tongues, one pint hot boiled potatoes, parsley, pepper, French dressing, lettuce.
Drain and cut the lambs' tongues into thin slices. Put a layer in the bottom of a salad bowl, then a layer of thin sliced, hot boiled potatoes, then another layer of tongue, sprinkling of parsley and a little pepper, and so continue until you have the desired quantity. Mix it with a French dressing, and serve on lettuce leaves.
A layered warm potato salad that depends entirely on one thing: the potatoes go in hot, so they drink up the dressing. Assemble it just before serving.
- The hinge: hot potatoesSlice and layer the potatoes while they are still steaming, and dress the bowl at once. Cooled potatoes seal up and the dressing sits on the surface instead of soaking in.
- A pint means volumeBoth quantities are measured by the cup, not weighed. A pint of sliced tongue is perhaps three-quarters of a pound; a pint of sliced boiled potatoes comes from roughly a pound of raw potatoes, two medium ones. The recipe does not specify a variety.
- Pickled lambs' tonguesOnce sold ready-pickled in jars and cans, now a special order from a butcher or an online supplier. If you start with fresh lamb tongues, simmer them until a skewer slides in easily -- an hour and a half or so, depending on size -- then peel them while warm before they go into a vinegar brine.
- SubstitutionSliced pickled beef tongue behaves the same way here, as does good corned beef tongue from a deli counter. Pastrami is not a bad stand-in for the flavor profile, though it is coarser in texture.
- French dressing of the periodIn a book of this era this is plain vinaigrette: oil and vinegar in something like two or three parts to one, with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken until cloudy. It is not the sweet orange bottled dressing, which came much later; some period versions are additionally seasoned with paprika.
- Salt and pepperThe recipe calls for pepper but no salt, perhaps because the pickled tongue carries plenty of its own. Taste the dressing against a slice of the tongue before you pour it over.
- ServingAs written this fills a medium salad bowl and serves four as a lunch dish. Lettuce leaves are the plate, not a tossed component — lay them flat and spoon the warm mixture on.
Collections like Ninety-Nine Salads belong to a moment, roughly 1890 to 1920, when the salad went from a side of dressed greens to a whole category of American dish, and cooks needed ninety-nine of them to fill out lunch menus, card parties and hot-weather suppers. Pickled tongues fit that project neatly: lamb and sheep tongues were cheap offal, they were sold by the jar, and they arrived at the kitchen already cooked and seasoned, which is exactly what a salad book wants. The layering rather than tossing, and the insistence on hot potatoes, give this a strong resemblance to the German-style warm potato salad that had been circulating in American cookery for decades ing it substantial enough to be the meal.