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To Boil a Tongue
368. If a smoked or dried tongue it should be soaked overnight, but if fresh from the pickle three or four hours will be long enough. Put it on the fire in cold water, and let it take an hour or two in coming to a boil; then draw it back, and let it simmer for three or four hours longer, till tender quite through. A few carrots and turnips sliced and boiled in the water improve the flavour. Trim the root, peel and glaze the tongue, and garnish with a paper frill around the root end, and a rose, or some che or two flowers cut in turnip, and stuck upon small branches of Portugal laurel on the top, over the windpipe.
A whole beef tongue takes patience rather than skill: a long, low simmer and then peeling while it is still hot. The Victorian dressing-up at the end is optional, and one part of it should be skipped.
- The hinge: peel it hotThe thick outer skin slips off cleanly the moment the tongue leaves the pot, and turns stubborn and ragged as it cools. Lift it onto a board, slit the skin along the underside and pull it away while you can still barely handle it.
- Which tongue you have"Fresh from the pickle" means a wet-cured tongue from the brine tub, the equivalent of today's corned or pickled tongue; "smoked or dried" is the harder, drier cured sort. An entirely fresh, uncured tongue needs no soaking at all, only the simmer.
- Soaking and saltOvernight soaking for a cured tongue is still sound practice, in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator rather than on the counter. Change the water once or twice; modern cures vary in strength, so taste the cooking liquid after an hour and add fresh water if it is aggressively salty.
- The slow startAn hour or two coming to the boil reflects a kitchen range with an unpredictable fire. On a modern hob, bring it up gently over 30-40 minutes, then hold it at a bare shiver with the surface barely moving. A hard boil toughens the muscle and clouds the broth.
- Judging tendernessThree to four hours suits a beef tongue of roughly three to four pounds, though weights vary. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance, somewhere in the region of 185-200F internally; lamb or veal tongues are much smaller and may be tender in 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
- GlazingTo glaze in the period sense, reduce a ladleful of the strained cooking liquid to a syrupy consistency and brush it over the peeled tongue, or use a warmed meat glaze. It is a gloss, not a sweet American-style glaze.
- Skip the laurelPortugal laurel (Prunus lusitanica) leaves are cyanogenic and have no place on a serving dish. Use bay, rosemary or watercress if you want greenery under the carved flowers.
- Yield and servingA whole beef tongue serves eight to ten. Carve thin slices from the tip back toward the root, on the diagonal; leftovers press well in a small bowl under a weight and slice cold for sandwiches.
Boiled tongue was a fixture of the nineteenth-century British cold table, sitting alongside ham and pressed beef on the sideboard because it carved neatly, kept for days and looked impressive without last-minute work. Tongue commonly reached the household already cured, either from the brine tub in the larder or bought smoked from the butcher, which is why the recipe opens by asking which sort you have. The elaborate finish here belongs to the era's taste for architectural presentation: a paper frill to mask the cut root, a flower carved from turnip, and greenery propped over the windpipe to disguise the fact that the diner is looking at a tongue. Recipes of this stamp assume a cook with time, a cool larder and a household that expected the same joint to appear hot at dinner and cold at breakfast.