Braised Tongue
A fresh tongue is necessary for braising. Put tongue in kettle, cover with boiling water, and cook slowly two hours. Take tongue from water and remove skin and roots. Place in deep pan and surround with one-third cup each carrot, onion, and celery, cut in dice, and one sprig parsley; then pour over four cups sauce. Cover closely, and bake two hours, turning after the first hour. Serve on platter and strain around the sauce.
Sauce for Tongue. Brown one-fourth cup butter, add one-fourth cup flour and stir together until well browned. Add gradually four cups of water in which tongue was cooked. Season with salt and pepper and add one teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce. One and one-half cups stewed and strained tomatoes may be used in place of some of the water.
A long, forgiving braise that hinges on one moment of timing. Everything else can drift by half an hour without harm.
- Peel it hotThe skin comes off cleanly only while the tongue is still steaming from the kettle. Let it cool and the membrane grips; you end up carving it off and losing meat with it. Lift it out, hold it in a towel, slit the skin lengthwise and strip it back.
- "Roots"The thick end of the tongue carries gristle, fat and glandular tissue. Trim all of it away after skinning; the trimmings account for a noticeable part of the raw weight.
- Fresh, not cornedThe instruction matters. Much tongue is sold cured and brined, which is red-pink and already salty; brined tongue braised in its own liquor and finished with a flour sauce will be inedibly salt. Fresh tongue is grey-pink and may need ordering from a butcher.
- Salt the first waterFresh tongue simmered in plain water gives a weak, flat broth, and that broth becomes the whole sauce. Salt the kettle water and add a bay leaf, a halved onion and a few peppercorns so the four cups you draw off are worth building on.
- Oven heatThe book gives none. A covered braise of this length wants 325°F; the liquid should barely tremble, not bubble. Two hours in the oven after two on the stove is right for a 3–4 lb tongue, longer for a larger one — it is done when a skewer slides through the thick end with no resistance.
- The brown rouxEqual quarter-cups of butter and flour cooked until well browned is a proper roux brun, and it needs several minutes of constant stirring over medium heat. Browned flour thickens less than pale flour; the sauce should coat a spoon lightly, not stand up.
- Sauce quantityFour cups is generous and deliberate — the tongue is meant to sit in it, not be glazed by it. Strain it after baking and reduce it on the stove if it has gone thin.
- Carving and yieldSlice across the grain, on a slant, starting at the tip. A 3–4 lb tongue serves six to eight. Cold leftovers slice very thin and are excellent on rye.
Tongue was a standard cut in the American kitchen well into the twentieth century, sold cheaply and treated as a proper joint rather than an oddity — the period's household manuals give it a place among the beef dishes, boiled and braised. The two-stage method here, a preliminary simmer followed by a slow covered bake on a bed of diced carrot, onion and celery, is the classic braise as taught in the French-influenced cookery schools of the period, with the mirepoix serving as flavour base rather than as a vegetable to be eaten. What marks the recipe as American of its date is the finish: a brown roux slackened with the cooking liquor and then sharpened with Worcestershire sauce, often said to have been the household bottle of choice for lifting a plain brown gravy, with the optional tomato pointing the same way.