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Pickled Tongue
Soak a pickled tongue overnight, drain and boil tender in water with 3 slices onion and 4 cloves. Peel tongue and place in pan to bake, sprinkle over it 1 onion and 1 green pepper chopped fine. Place 3 slices of lemon on top of the pepper and onion. Then pour 1/2 pint ketchup over all and bake until pepper and onion are done, basting when necessary.
Smoked and pickled tongue make good camp, trailer or galley stores because they keep longer than fresh meat and still taste fresh when cooked. od
A two-stage dish: the cured tongue is simmered until tender, then finished in the oven under a ketchup glaze. Nearly all the work is in the first stage, and the timing given in the original is left to the cook.
- Peel it hotThe rough skin slips off a beef tongue only while it is still very hot from the pot. Let it cool and you will be paring it off in shreds; lift it out, hold it with a towel, slit the skin lengthwise and strip it.
- Simmering timeNo time is given. A 3 to 4 lb cured beef tongue needs roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours at a bare simmer, until a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance. Veal tongues are much smaller and may be done in 1 1/2 hours.
- The overnight soakThis step assumes a heavily brined tongue from a barrel or butcher's crock. Modern vacuum-packed corned or pickled tongue is far less salty; a few hours in cold water, or a rinse and a change of the simmering water, is enough.
- Half a pint of ketchupOne cup. If using standard bottled ketchup, loosen it with a few spoonfuls of the tongue's cooking liquid so it bastes rather than sits.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives none. A moderate oven, around 350F, would suit; bake until the onion and pepper are soft, as the recipe directs, watching that the ketchup does not scorch at the pan edges.
- Lemon and pepper"Green pepper" here most likely means a sweet bell pepper rather than a chile. The recipe does not say whether the lemon slices are removed before serving.
- ServingA 3 lb tongue serves six to eight. Slice thinly on a slight diagonal, starting at the tip, and spoon the pan mixture over. Cold leftovers slice more cleanly than warm.
Tongue was a standard cured cut in American butchering well into the mid-twentieth century, sold smoked or in pickle alongside corned beef, and it appears here for exactly the reason the book states: cured meat traveled. In the era of the camp kitchen and the early house trailer, before reliable iceboxes on the road, salted and smoked cuts were the practical protein, and a tongue is compact, boneless once trimmed, and yields a great deal of meat for its size. The ketchup-and-green-pepper finish is characteristic of American cookery of the 1920s through 1950s, when bottled ketchup was the usual shortcut to a sweet-sour glaze; the same treatment shows up on baked ham, meatloaf and short ribs in books of the period. Tongue has largely left the mainstream American butcher counter but remains common in Mexican, Jewish delicatessen and East Asian cooking, which is where it is easiest to find today.