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Tongue Salad
Cut some cold boiled beef tongue into small thin strips, place them in a salad-bowl and add some chopped boiled potatoes and a small quantity of celery cut into pieces. Strew over the salad some finely-chopped parsley and baste it with a few tablespoonfuls of beef broth. Prepare a plain salad-dressing of oil and vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper and pour it over the salad, which place in the refrigerator. When ready to serve, garnish the salad with heart-leaves of lettuce.
A composed leftover salad that depends entirely on the tongue being properly cooked and cooled beforehand, and on the potatoes absorbing the broth while still warm.
- Start with the tongueOscar assumes a boiled tongue already in the larder. A fresh beef tongue needs 2.5-3 hours at a bare simmer with aromatics, then peeling of the tough outer skin while still hot; cured or pickled tongue, sold ready-cooked at delis, works as well and needs only slicing. One tongue yields far more than this salad requires.
- Baste while warmBaste with the broth -- The broth is the unusual step. The recipe does not say at what temperature the potatoes should be dressed, but dressing potatoes with broth and vinaigrette while they are still warm helps them absorb it; fully cold potatoes take up less dressing.
- "A plain salad-dressing"The recipe asks only for oil and vinegar with salt and pepper. A conventional proportion is about three parts oil to one of vinegar; a neutral or mild olive oil and a wine vinegar suit it.
- Chilling timeThe recipe says only to place the salad in the refrigerator, with no time given. About an hour lets the dressing take hold; much longer and the celery softens and the parsley darkens.
- ProportionsNo quantities are given; the recipe says only 'some' chopped potatoes and 'a small quantity' of celery. As a working guess, roughly equal volumes of tongue and potato with celery at about a quarter of that, or about 1 lb of each for four as a luncheon dish.
- PotatoesWaxy varieties hold their shape after boiling, dicing and marinating; a floury baking potato will collapse into the dressing.
- The garnish"Heart-leaves of lettuce" means the pale inner leaves of a head of butter or romaine lettuce, arranged around the mound rather than mixed in. Add them at the table so they stay crisp.
Tongue was ordinary food in 1900, not a novelty: it appeared boiled and pressed on cold buffets, in sandwiches, and sliced thin as a breakfast meat. Oscar Tschirky's book is full of dishes like this one, which quietly convert a large cooked joint into a second service — the salad exists because a kitchen the size of the Waldorf's always had cold tongue and boiled potatoes on hand. The technique recalls, loosely, the German and Austrian cold meat and potato salad traditions that circulated in New York's German restaurants, where cold cooked meat, potato, celery and a sharp oil-and-vinegar dressing were familiar. The moistening with beef broth rather than more oil is the professional touch: it seasons the potato without making the salad heavy.