Calves' Tongues
Cook tongues until tender in boiling water to cover, with six slices carrot, two stalks celery, one onion stuck with six cloves, one-half teaspoon peppercorns and one-half tablespoon salt; take from water and remove skin and roots. Split and pour over equal parts brown stock and tomatoes boiled until thick.
Calves' Tongues, Sauce Piquante Cook four tongues, until tender, in boiling water, to cover, with six slices carrot, two stalks celery, one onion stuck with eight cloves, one teaspoon peppercorns, and one-half tablespoon salt. Take tongues from water, and remove skin and roots. Cut in halves lengthwise and reheat in Sauce Piquante. Brown one-fourth cup butter, add six tablespoons flour, and stir until well browned; then add two cups Brown Stock and cook three minutes. Season with two-thirds teaspoon salt, one-half teaspoon paprika, few grains of cayenne, one tablespoon vinegar, one-half tablespoon capers, and one cucumber pickle thinly sliced. Served garnished with cucumber pickles, and cold cooked beets cut in fancy shapes.
Two versions of the same dish: a plain braise finished with tomato, and a fuller one with sauce piquante. Both hinge on cooking the tongues long enough that the skin peels away cleanly.
- Sourcing the tonguesCalves' tongues are small (roughly half a pound to a pound and a half each) and usually a special-order item from a butcher; beef tongue (2-3 lb) is far easier to find and works the same way, though it will need considerably longer, on the order of three hours. Four calves' tongues should serve four to six.
- How long is "tender"The recipe gives no time. Expect 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer for calves' tongues. The test is a skewer sliding in without resistance at the thickest part; a rolling boil only toughens the muscle.
- Peel while hotThe skin comes off in one sheet only while the tongue is still hot. Let it cool and the membrane grips. Lift the tongues out, run cold water over them for a few seconds so you can handle them, then peel and trim the root end and any gristle.
- Brown stockBeef (sometimes veal) meat and bones, browned before simmering. Good unsalted beef stock is a fair substitute, but reduce it slightly and taste before adding the recipe's salt, since commercial stock is usually already seasoned.
- The brown rouxA quarter cup butter to six tablespoons flour, cooked until genuinely brown, is the whole character of sauce piquante. Keep the heat moderate and stir constantly so the flour browns without scorching. Add the stock in stages to avoid lumps.
- Boiled tomatoesFor the first version, canned whole tomatoes crushed and reduced until thick give the right result; the recipe means plain tomatoes cooked down, not a tomato sauce with its own seasoning.
- Cucumber pickleA firm sour dill or a gherkin, not a sweet pickle. The vinegar and capers are what make the sauce piquante rather than simply brown.
- ServingSlice the halved tongues on the diagonal and spoon the sauce over. The beets cut in "fancy shapes" were a period presentation; they still earn their place as an acid, sweet counterpoint.
Tongue held a respectable place on American tables well into the twentieth century, and Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book treats it as an ordinary cut rather than an oddity. Sauce piquante belongs to the French repertoire that the Boston Cooking School taught as a matter of course: a brown roux-based sauce sharpened with vinegar, capers and pickle, close kin to what Escoffier is generally said to have codified as sauce piquante in the same decades. The garnish of beets cut in shapes reflects the era's conviction that a plate should be composed, a habit inherited from the elaborate service of nineteenth-century hotel cooking and simplified for the middle-class kitchen. Organ and offal cuts are usually said to have fallen out of American home cooking after the Second World War, which is why a dish that once needed no explanation now needs a butcher's order.