No. 642

Beef Tongue Garnishing, Andalusian Tomato Sauce

Garniture de Langue de Boeuf, Sauce Tomates Andalouse

Cut twelve slices, each one three-sixteenths of an inch thick from the thick end of a cooked beef tongue; pare them neatly either into rounds, ovals, or half hearts; heat them in a little half glaze (No. 413), and dress them around a remove covering with a Andalusian tomato sauce (No. 550).

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For the Modern Kitchen

A garnish rather than a dish in its own right: twelve neat slices of cooked tongue, glazed and ranged around a large joint. Everything depends on the tongue being properly cooked and cooled first, and on the slices being warmed rather than cooked again.

The tongue itselfRanhofer assumes a tongue already cooked elsewhere in the book. Standard practice for the period was to simmer a brined or fresh tongue gently for several hours until a skewer slides in easily, peel off the rough outer skin while it is still warm, then press and chill it so it slices cleanly.
Slice thicknessThree-sixteenths of an inch is about 5 mm. Thick enough to hold a cut shape without curling, thin enough to warm through quickly in the half glaze.
Cutting the shapesRounds, ovals and half-hearts could be pared with a knife or stamped with cutters. Work from the thick butt end, as the recipe directs, where the cross-section is widest and the grain most even.
Half glazeNo. 413 is demi-glace — brown stock reduced with espagnole to a syrupy, deeply savoury sauce. A good reduced veal or beef stock, thick enough to coat a spoon, does the same job. Warm the slices in it over low heat, no more than a minute or two; a simmer will dry the meat and make it stringy.
Andalusian tomato sauceNo. 550 is cross-referenced but not reproduced here; "andalouse" in this period generally indicates tomato with sweet red peppers. Any well-reduced tomato-and-pimiento sauce is in the right key; keep it thick, since a loose sauce will run under the garnish.
"A remove"A relevé — the substantial joint that followed the soup or fish in a formal service. The tongue slices are set in a ring around it and the sauce spooned over. On a modern table, treat it as a garnish for a roast or a braise rather than as a course.
YieldThe recipe fixes the count at twelve slices to ring one remove; it gives no serving number. Adding slices to circle a bigger roast is straightforward; scale the half glaze with them.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long numbered catalogue of garnishings — components meant to be cross-referenced and combined rather than cooked start to finish. Nothing here is self-contained: the tongue, the half glaze and the Andalusian sauce all point to other numbers, which is how a brigade kitchen actually worked, each station producing a part that the chef assembled at service. "Andalouse" in nineteenth-century French cookery generally signals sweet red peppers and tomato, a nod to Spain that appears across the sauce chapters of the period. Beef tongue, meanwhile, was neither exotic nor cheap-cut apology in this era; brined, pressed and sliced, it was a standard of both the grand restaurant buffet and the domestic cold table, valued precisely because it cut into clean, even rounds that held their shape on a platter.