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Calf's Tongue with Tomato Sauce
Trim and well wash calf's tongue, place it in a saucepan of boiling water, and scald. Remove, drain and lard, put it into a saucepan with two carrots and two or three onions, three heads of cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs, and sufficient rich stock to moisten. Allow it to simmer gently for four hours. Take out the tongue when done, and slice it in halves, removing the skin; put them on a dish, and serve with tomato sauce poured over.
Poultry. Capons The instructions for preparing capons for cooking are as follows: FOR CLEANING AND TRUSSING--Pluck off all the feathers and singe a capon, chop off the head close to the back, remove the crop, and loosen the liver and other inside parts to the breast end. Cut around the vent, draw it clean, flatten the breast-bone with a cutlet bat, cut off the toenails and tuck the feet down close to the legs.
FOR BOILING--Put the forefinger through the interior, under the skin of the legs, raise it, make holes in them, and push in the legs. Pass a skewer into the first joint of the pinion, bring the middle of the leg close to it; push a skewer through the middle of the leg into the body, and repeat this operation on the other side. Place the liver and gizzard in the pinions, turn the ends or points on the back, and fasten the legs into position by tieing them with a string.
A straightforward braise that assumes you know how to handle offal and have veal stock on hand. The page also runs on into the book's poultry section, so the capon trussing notes at the end belong to a different entry.
- Skin the tongue while it is hotThis is the hinge. The rough outer membrane peels away cleanly in the first few minutes out of the pot and becomes stubborn as the tongue cools. Oscar has you slice first and skin after; it is easier to peel the whole tongue, then slice.
- Larding is optional nowLarding means threading strips of pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle. Fatback and larding needles are both hard to come by; a few strips of bacon laid over the tongue, or simply braising it covered in stock, gives a similar result.
- "Three heads of cloves"Almost certainly whole clove buds, three of them, rather than garlic; older texts use "head" loosely for the dried bud, though the reason for the usage is not documented. Three is enough for one tongue; clove takes over quickly.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf tied together. "Sweet" here means aromatic rather than sugared.
- Sufficient rich stock to moistenVeal or beef stock, enough to keep the tongue moist rather than to cover it; the wording suggests a braise rather than a poach. The recipe itself finishes the dish with tomato sauce, not with the braising liquid.
- Four hours is not an exaggerationA calf's tongue is dense muscle and genuinely wants three to four hours at a bare simmer. It is done when a skewer meets no resistance at the thick end.
- Slicing"slice it in halves" most likely means splitting the tongue lengthwise, though the text is not explicit. For serving, cut across on a slight bias into quarter-inch slices, taking the tip and the thicker root separately since they differ in texture.
- YieldOne calf's tongue runs about 1.5 to 2 lb and serves four as a main course. Beef tongue is two to three times the size and needs proportionally longer.
Oscar Tschirky was never the Waldorf's chef -- he was its maître d'hôtel -- but his 1896 book collected the hotel's working repertoire, and that repertoire was French service adapted to American supply. Tongue sat comfortably in it. In the 1890s it was neither exotic nor cheap-cut cookery but a standard item on hotel and club menus, sold fresh, salted or smoked, and a braised calf's tongue with a tomato sauce would have read as unremarkable to a Waldorf diner. The tomato sauce itself points to the professional kitchen: pouring it over a braised meat was routine rather than a flourish. The capon trussing notes that follow are a reminder of what a hotel kitchen still did in-house -- birds arrived with heads, feet and feathers, and plucking, singeing and drawing were part of the job.