No. 2608

Red Beef Tongues, Smoked

Langues de Boeuf Ecarlate Fumees

Cut off the windpipes and prick the tongues with the point of a trussing needle; rub over with pulverized saltpetre, mingled with as much brown sugar, and place them in an earthen or wooden vessel between layers of white salt, with thyme, bay leaf, basil, juniper berries and cloves. Put a board over with a weight on top; turn them after three days and cover so that the air cannot enter and repeat the operation every three days during the period of twelve. To cook, place them in a stock pot after washing in several waters; cover with a sufficient quantity of water to allow them to swim, adding a bunch of parsley garnished with two carrots and two onions; boil slowly for an hour to an hour and a half until thoroughly cooked, which can be ascertained by inserting the point of a trussing needle deep into them; remove from the stock and wrap in a wet cloth; leave to cool, then dress them in a circle leaning against a crouton with the tips downward; garnish with jelly and serve.

← No. 2607 Red Beef Tongues Arcade Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2609 Red Beef Tongues with Jelly →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a twelve-day dry cure followed by smoking, and it belongs to a period before anyone measured curing salts by weight. The finishing steps — the poaching, the crouton, the ring of jelly — are straightforward; the cure itself is the problem, and it is not one that can be patched by adjusting a time or a temperature.

Unmeasured saltpetrePulverized saltpetre is potassium nitrate. Ranhofer gives no weight for it, no weight of meat, and no weight of salt, so there is no way to know whether the finished tongue carries a trace of nitrate or many times the modern permitted limit. Modern cures specify nitrite or nitrate as a fixed parts-per-million of the meat weight precisely because the margin between a working cure and an unsafe dose is narrow.
"As much brown sugar"The sugar is measured only against the saltpetre, which is itself unmeasured. The whole cure is proportioned to nothing.
No cure temperatureAn earthen or wooden vessel under a weighted board, turned every three days, would presumably have stood in a cold larder or cellar, but the recipe never says how cold, or indeed where. A nitrate cure relies on bacterial reduction of nitrate to nitrite over days, and that same window is when Clostridium botulinum can establish itself in a low-oxygen, salted mass of meat held too warm.
The smoking is not describedThe dish is titled fumées, smoked, but no smoking step, temperature, duration or wood appears anywhere in the text. Cold-smoking a cured tongue is done in the danger zone by design and depends entirely on the cure having worked; here the cure cannot be verified.
"White salt" is not a specificationNineteenth-century salts varied in grain and in mineral content, and the recipe says nothing about quantity. A layered pack of unknown salt gives no reliable concentration in the meat.
Pricking the tonguePerforating the surface with a trussing needle drives surface bacteria into the interior. It was done to help the cure penetrate, but with an uncontrolled cure it works against you.
If you want a scarlet tongueUse a current recipe with cure weighed against meat weight and a stated refrigeration temperature. The presentation notes here are still worth reading: the tongue is boiled slowly for an hour to an hour and a half until a needle passes deep into it, wrapped in a wet cloth to cool so it holds its shape, then arranged in a circle leaning against a bread crouton with the tips downward.

A Little History

Écarlate — scarlet — is the old French kitchen name for beef or ox tongue cured with saltpetre, which fixes the pigment in the muscle and leaves it a bright pinkish red rather than the grey-brown of a plain boiled tongue. That colour is the point of the name, and it is the same nitrate chemistry that makes ham pink. The dish sits among garnishings for cold dishes, a cured tongue being useful on a cold buffet: it sliced cleanly, kept, and looked well against aspic. The Epicurean (1894) sets down the practice of Delmonico's in New York, where Ranhofer was chef. The vagueness about quantities reads as professional shorthand rather than carelessness, and it is what makes the recipe unusable now.