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Tongue, Sweetbread, Calf's: Serve
Serve with Italian sauce (No. 6).
No. 100. Lingue di Vitello all' Italiana (Calves' Tongues) Ingredients: Calves' tongues, salt, butter, stock, water, glaze, potatoes, ham, truffles, sauce piquante.
Rub a good handful of salt into two or three calves' tongues and leave them for twenty-four hours, then wash off all the salt and soak them in fresh water for two hours.
Stew them gently till tender, take them out, skin and braize them in butter and good stock for half an hour. Let them get cold and cut them into slices about half an inch thick; put the slices into a buttered sautépan and cover them with a good thick glaze; let them get quite hot and then arrange them on a border of potatoes and garnish each slice with round shapes of cooked ham and truffle. Fill the centre with any vegetables you like; fried cucumber is excellent, but if you use it do not forget to boil it for five minutes before you fry it to take away the bitter taste. Serve with a sauce piquante (No. 10, or No. 226).
A late-Victorian Italian-style presentation of calves' tongues, written for a cook who already knew what a glaze and a potato border were. The instructions are sound; what they lack are numbers.
- The salting is seasoning, not curingA handful of salt rubbed in and left 24 hours is a light dry season that firms the meat and draws out blood. It is not a nitrite cure, so the tongues will cook grey-brown rather than pink. The two-hour soak afterwards is not optional if you want the sauce to be edible.
- Cook it far longer than "till tender" suggestsCalves' tongues need roughly 1.5 to 2.5 hours at a bare simmer, and small ones are done sooner than you expect. Test by piercing the thickest part; it should offer no resistance at all.
- Skin them hotThe rough outer membrane peels away cleanly only while the tongue is still steaming. Once cold it welds on and you will be carving away good meat to remove it.
- "Glaze" means reduced stockIn this period glaze is glace de viande: strong veal or beef stock boiled down until it is syrupy and coats a spoon. Commercial demi-glace concentrate does the same job. It is not a sugar glaze.
- "Braize them in butter and good stock"A shallow braise, covered, over a very low heat (or in a low oven, if you prefer), with enough stock to come part way up the meat. The half hour is to build flavour and colour on already-tender meat, so keep the liquid barely moving.
- The border of potatoesMost likely duchesse potato - riced potato with butter and egg yolk - piped in a ring round the dish and browned, with the vegetables in the middle. Mashed potato spooned into a wall works but will not hold as crisp an edge.
- Truffles and hamFresh black truffle is a luxury the original assumed; a jarred or brined truffle, sliced and stamped into rounds, gives the visual effect for a fraction of the cost. The ham should be cooked, unsmoked and cut with the same round cutter.
- The cucumber note is worth keepingOlder field cucumbers carried real bitterness in the peel and seed end, hence the five-minute blanch. Modern varieties are generally bred to be far less bitter, but the blanch still softens them enough to fry without going leathery.
- YieldTwo or three calves' tongues, sliced half an inch thick, will serve roughly four to eight as a course depending on their size. Cold leftover slices are good with the same sauce piquante at room temperature.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) was Mrs W. G. Waters's attempt to teach English households Italian cooking through a frame story - a house party of friends with an Italian teacher, on the Decameron model - and this dish shows the seams: an Italian title, lingue di vitello all'italiana, over a method that is pure French professional kitchen practice - salting, braising, glaze, a piped potato border, truffle and ham cut into rounds, and a numbered cross-reference to sauce piquante. Tongue was a mainstay of nineteenth-century tables in a way it no longer is, partly because a whole calf or ox came into the house and every part had its use, and partly because it slices so neatly that it suits the elaborate garnished platters the period admired. Cold pressed tongue was everyday; a hot tongue built up on a potato border with truffle discs was the same cheap cut dressed for company, which is roughly the argument the book makes for Italian cooking generally.