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Virginia Beef Tongue
I beef tongue, fresh
¼ cup butter or fat
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 cup stewed cranberries
½ lemon
Scrub the tongue and simmer it until tender, in water to cover. Remove the skin and trim the root end. Take one cup of the liquor in which the tongue was cooked and add the brown sugar, stewed cranberries, butter or other fat, cloves, and lemon, sliced. Simmer the tongue in this mixture for one-fourth hour. Place on a dish with the sauce, garnish with slices of lemon and sprigs of parsley, and serve.
Tongue may be jellied and served cold.
A fresh (uncured) tongue braised plain, then finished in a sweet-sour cranberry glaze. The only real difficulty is the long first simmer, which the original passes over in five words.
- "Simmer until tender" means 3 to 4 hoursA 3-4 lb fresh beef tongue needs roughly 3 to 3½ hours at a bare simmer, sometimes longer. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance; undercooked tongue is rubbery and no amount of glazing will fix it.
- Peel it hotThe skin lifts off in one sheet while the tongue is still steaming and becomes stubborn as it cools. Let it sit two or three minutes out of the pot, slit the skin lengthwise on the underside, and pull. Trim the root end of gristle, small bones and fat.
- Fresh, not cornedThe recipe specifies fresh tongue. Tongue is also sold cured or corned, which comes out pink and salty and would fight the brown sugar; if that is all you can get, soak it overnight with a change of water.
- Season the cooking waterThe original simmers in plain water. An onion, a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and a good spoonful of salt in the pot pay for themselves, since the tongue takes up seasoning during the long cook and the glaze only touches the surface.
- Stewed cranberriesThis means whole cranberries cooked down with sugar and a little water until they burst, not jellied sauce from a can. Whole-berry canned sauce is the nearest substitute; if you use it, cut the brown sugar to about half a cup or the glaze will be cloying.
- Whole clovesA tablespoon is a lot. Tie them in a scrap of cheesecloth or stick them into the lemon slices so you can pull them out before serving rather than have a diner bite one.
- The final quarter hourFifteen minutes in the glaze is for flavour and colour, not cooking. Turn the tongue two or three times and spoon the syrup over it; if the sauce thickens too fast, loosen it with more of the cooking liquor.
- Carving and yieldSlice thinly on a slight diagonal, starting toward the tip; the middle gives the best slices. A 3-4 lb tongue serves six to eight.
- Jellied, as the last line suggestsThe cooking liquor from a tongue is rich in gelatine and will often set on its own when chilled, though it may need reducing or a little added gelatine to be sure. Strain it, skim the fat, pack sliced tongue into a loaf pan, pour the liquor over and refrigerate overnight.
Tongue was a standard, unremarkable cut in American households well into the twentieth century, sold cheaply and treated as both a hot dinner and a cold cut for sandwiches and buffet suppers. What makes this version "Virginia" may well be the treatment rather than the meat: the brown sugar, cloves and fruit are the same vocabulary applied to a Virginia baked ham, and Southern cookery of the period leaned hard on sweet glazes with cured and boiled meats. The cranberries are often said to echo the older English fashion of serving boiled meats with a sharp fruit sauce, a habit that survives in the modern pairing of pork with applesauce, though the descent is a surmise rather than a documented one. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published this alongside its magazines as practical household reference, and its inclusion of tongue with no explanation of how to buy or handle it tells you how routine the cut still was to its readers.