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Boiled Beef Tongue
Wash clean, put in the pot with water to cover it, a pint of salt, and a small pod of red pepper; if the water boils away, add more a small pod of red pepper; if the water boils away, add more so as to keep the tongue nearly covered until done; boil until it can be pierced easily with a fork, take out, and if needed for present use, take off the skin and set away to cool; if to be kept some days, do not peel until wanted for table. The same amount of salt will do for three tongues if the pot is large enough to hold them, always remembering to keep sufficient water in the kettle to cover all while boiling.
Soak salt tongue over night, and cook in same way, omitting the salt.
Or, after peeling, place the tongue in saucepan with one cup water, one-half cup vinegar, four table-spoons sugar, and cook till liquor is evaporated.-M. J. W.
A straightforward long simmer, but two things in the original will trip up a modern cook: the enormous quantity of salt and the instruction to peel while the tongue is still hot.
- Peel it hotThe tough outer skin slips off cleanly the moment the tongue comes out of the pot and becomes very hard to remove once cooled. Take it out, let it sit only until you can handle it, then slit the skin lengthwise and pull it away, trimming the gristle and small bones at the root end.
- That pint of saltA pint is 2 cups, roughly a pound of salt in the pot. This is closer to a boiling brine than seasoning, and with modern table or kosher salt the result will be aggressively salty. For a single fresh tongue, 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt per quart of water gives a well-seasoned meat.
- Fresh vs. salt tongue"Salt tongue" is a corned or pickled tongue, cured in brine before sale; cured tongue is still sold, particularly at delis, though fresh tongue is also widely available. A cured tongue is soaked overnight as directed and cooked with no added salt at all. Fresh tongue is the one the main instruction assumes.
- Timing"Boil until it can be pierced easily with a fork" means 2½ to 3½ hours at a bare simmer for a 3 to 4 lb beef tongue. Hold it below a rolling boil; a hard boil toughens the muscle and clouds the liquid. A skewer should meet no resistance at the thickest part.
- Pod of red pepperA single small dried hot pepper, left whole. It perfumes the liquid rather than making it hot. A dried chile de árbol or a small cayenne pod is the closest match; a pinch of flakes will do.
- The vinegar-sugar variationThat last sentence is a separate finish, not a step: peel the boiled tongue, then reduce it in 1 cup water, ½ cup vinegar and 4 tablespoons sugar until the liquid is nearly gone, turning it so it glazes. Watch the last few minutes closely, as the sugar catches quickly once the water goes.
- Keeping itThe advice to leave the skin on for storage was sound in a cool larder; today, refrigerate the tongue in its cooking liquid, which keeps it moist and sliceable for three or four days. Slice thin, across the grain and on a slight angle.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb beef tongue gives about 2 to 2½ lb of trimmed meat, enough for six to eight as a main course, or a good deal more sliced cold for sandwiches.
Tongue was standard household meat in nineteenth-century America, not a curiosity: it was cheap, it came off every beef carcass, and boiled and pressed it sliced beautifully for cold suppers, picnics and sandwich plates. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) sits in the long tradition of compiled community cookbooks, and the initials "M. J. W." at the end mark this as a contributed receipt rather than the editor's own. The vinegar-and-sugar finish belongs to the sweet-sour treatments for boiled meats common on both sides of the Atlantic in this period, and closely resembles the raisin and sweet-sour sauces served with tongue in German-American and Jewish kitchens. Salt or "corned" tongue was a common market form, since curing bought time before refrigeration, and the note to soak it overnight is here for that reason.