Home › The Belgian Kitchen › Ox-Tongue a la Bourgeoise
Ox-Tongue a la Bourgeoise
Braise a tongue with two glasses of Madeira, one carrot, one onion, thyme, bay-leaf, for two hours. Take seven tomatoes cut in pieces, four carrots cut in two and three in four, about one-half inch long, ten smallish onions, and braise them all together; then add two large table-spoonfuls of demi-glaze, some salt and pepper. Serve all very hot on an oval dish. Braised tongue eats very well with spinach, carrots or sorrel.
Beef a la mode Take the raw beef, either rump-steak or fillet, and brown it in the pan in some butter. Then add a little boiling water. Add then six or eight chopped shallots, the hearts of two celeries chopped, a few small and whole carrots, pepper, salt, two cloves. Before serving, bind the sauce with a little flour and pour all over the meat.
Two recipes have run together here: the tongue, and a short Beef à la mode that begins mid-paragraph. Both are straightforward braises once the archaic shorthand is unpicked.
- The hinge: cook the tongue far longerTwo hours will not tenderise a whole beef tongue, which is dense muscle laced with connective tissue. Reckon on 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, or until a skewer slides in with no resistance; the vegetables and demi-glace go in only for the last 40 minutes or they will collapse.
- Peel it hotThe thick outer skin must be slit and pulled off while the tongue is still hot from the pot. Let it cool and the skin sets fast to the meat. Trim the root end of gristle and fat before slicing across on the diagonal.
- Fresh or cured tongueTongue was commonly sold both fresh and cured. A cured (pickled, pink) tongue should be soaked several hours in cold water and given a preliminary blanch, else the braise will be too salty for the demi-glace. Fresh tongue needs no soaking. Salt the dish only at the end either way.
- "Two glasses of Madeira"A wineglass of the period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so roughly 1/2 cup total, though period glasses varied and more will do no harm. Use a dry or medium Madeira; a Sercial or Verdelho. Sweet cream Madeira will make the sauce cloying alongside the tomatoes.
- Demi-glazeDemi-glace: espagnole sauce let down with brown stock and reduced by half. Two tablespoons of a good commercial demi-glace concentrate, or about 1/2 cup of homemade, will do. Reduced beef stock plus a spoonful of tomato paste is a reasonable stand-in.
- The garbled carrotsThe line means to cut the carrots into pieces roughly half an inch long, some halved and some quartered depending on thickness, so they cook evenly. Peeled small onions, left whole, and the tomatoes in rough chunks.
- Oven or stovetopEither works. In the oven, a covered braise at 325F holds a steadier simmer than a burner and needs no attention beyond turning the tongue once.
- Beef à la mode, second recipeRump steak or fillet browned then stewed is an odd pairing to modern eyes; fillet has no collagen and will go dry and grey in a braise. Use a chuck or blade cut and give it 2 1/2 to 3 hours. "The hearts of two celeries" means the pale inner stalks of two whole heads. Bind at the end with a beurre manié rather than raw flour, which tastes pasty stirred straight in.
- YieldA whole beef tongue runs 3 to 4 lb and serves six to eight, with leftovers that slice well cold. The suggested spinach, carrots or sorrel are all sharp or sweet foils to a fatty cut, which is the point of the pairing.
À la bourgeoise is a French kitchen term meaning, in effect, cooked as a household would cook it rather than as a restaurant would: the meat braised with its vegetables cut plainly and served in the same dish, no garnish assembled separately. That domestic framing suits The Belgian Cook Book, which was published in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees in Britain, in aid of Belgian relief. Tongue belongs to that economy: an inexpensive cut, sold fresh or in brine, rich enough to feed a large table and just as good cold the next day. The two glasses of Madeira and the spoonfuls of demi-glace point to a cook who had absorbed something of the French classical repertoire, while sorrel as an accompaniment is at home in the Low Countries, where its sharpness was one answer to fat meat.