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Beef Tongue En Papillottes
Pare and neatly trim a medium, fresh beef tongue. Arrange a mirepoix in a braising pan, and lay the tongue over. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, spread two tablespoons lard over the vegetables, then cook on fire ten minutes. Moisten with a quart water, one gill claret, one gill demi-glace and one gill tomato sauce, place lid on, boil ten minutes, then set in oven two hours, turning tongue in gravy every half hour. Remove, lift up tongue, plunge in cold water, then peel off skin with a coarse towel, then cut in twelve even slices and keep on a plate till required. Skim fat from surface of sauce, then let reduce on the fire to one pint. Strain sauce into another saucepan, add twelve finely chopped, canned mushrooms and four tablespoons bread crumbs, pour in two tablespoons sherry, and boil ten minutes. Remove to a table. Cut from a raw ham twelve thin slices same size as the tongue. Cut six pieces white paper fifteen inches square, fold in two, then cut each piece in semi-heart-shape length and width of the paper, open and lightly oil both sides. Place one slice of ham in centre of one-half of paper, spread a little sauce on top of ham, then place a piece of tongue over sauce. Spread a little more sauce over tongue, then another piece of tongue, more sauce, and finally a piece of ham. Envelop the tongue, etc., by twisting both edges of the paper. Place on a tin, set in oven ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A two-stage dish: the tongue is braised whole, then sliced and reheated in paper parcels with ham and a mushroom sauce. Plan on most of an afternoon, and note that the paper stage takes ten minutes and no more.
- Gills and quantitiesA gill is half a cup, so the braising liquid is 4 cups water plus 1/2 cup each claret (any dry red), demi-glace and tomato sauce. The reduced sauce finishes at 2 cups before the mushrooms and crumbs go in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; a moderate braising oven is implied, and the pan is lidded with plenty of liquid, so the exact heat is forgiving. Two hours is what the recipe allows for its "medium" tongue; a larger one will want longer. It is done when a skewer slides through the thickest part with no resistance.
- Peel it hotPeel it warm -- The recipe's cold-water plunge is brief, only enough to handle the tongue; the skin comes away most easily while the meat is still warm, so work quickly with the coarse towel. If it has cooled and the skin resists, warming it again in the braising liquid helps.
- MirepoixNo proportions are given. The classical proportion is roughly 2 parts onion to 1 each carrot and celery, coarsely cut. It is flavouring only and is strained out with the sauce.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock, thickened in the old style with a little roux. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate is an honest substitute; a heavily reduced beef stock also works, though it will be less glossy.
- "Raw ham"This means uncooked cured ham -- prosciutto, speck, or a similar dry-cured leg -- not fresh pork. Cut the twelve slices thin enough to drape, since they only get ten minutes of heat.
- Canned mushroomsCanned mushrooms were commercially available and appear routinely in cookbooks of this date; here twelve are finely chopped into the sauce. Sauteed fresh cremini give a cleaner flavour; the bread crumbs bind the sauce so it clings rather than running out of the paper.
- PapillotesUse parchment rather than modern printed or waxed paper, cut into the half-heart shape described and brushed with oil on both sides. Twist or crimp the open curve closed as the recipe directs. No oven temperature is given; ten minutes is only to heat the contents through.
- YieldSix parcels, each holding two slices of tongue between two of ham -- six servings as a course, with the parcels opened at the table.
En papillote -- "in a wrapper" -- is classical French restaurant technique, and by the nineteenth century it had become a standard way to serve small portions of already-cooked meat: veal, sweetbreads, chops, and here tongue, layered with ham and a sauce so that the paper traps the aroma until it is torn open in front of the diner. Filippini's International Cook Book comes out of the Delmonico's tradition in New York, and this recipe reads like restaurant work written down for a household cook: a full braise, a sauce reduced and finished separately, and an assembly step that could be done in advance and fired to order. Beef tongue carried none of the awkwardness it has for some cooks now; it was an ordinary butcher's cut, cheap enough to be everyday and rich enough to dress up, and cookbooks of the period give it a dozen treatments. The claret, demi-glace and sherry mark it as the dressed-up version.