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Beef Tongue, Milanaise
Procure a fresh beef tongue, rub it all over with a tablespoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Place mirepoix, in braising pan with an ounce butter, lay the tongue over, then cook on the fire for twenty minutes, turning the tongue and stirring the vegetables once in a while. Moisten with a pint water, one-half gill white wine, two gills demi-glace, two gills tomato sauce, and add a saltspoon saffron. Cover the pan, boil for five minutes, then set in oven for two hours and a half, basting the tongue once in a while. Remove, take up the tongue, plunge it in cold water, remove and skin it, then neatly trim all around and keep hot until required. Plunge four ounces spaghetti in a quart boiling water with a teaspoon salt and boil for twenty-five minutes. Drain on a sieve, then cut in inch pieces, place in a saucepan with six sliced canned mushrooms, one ounce cooked ham, cut in julienne strips and a very small sliced truffle, skim fat from the surface of the sauce, then strain it in the spaghetti pan, mix well and cook for five minutes, adding one ounce Parmesan cheese. Mix well, place the spaghetti in a large, hot dish, cut the tongue in quarter-inch slices, arrange over the spaghetti one overlapping another. Strain the sauce into a saucebowl and serve.
A classic braise-and-garnish plate: the tongue does the long work in the oven while the pasta garnish is assembled at the end. Most of what needs translating here is measurement and the pasta timing.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup, and two gills each of demi-glace and tomato sauce are one cup each. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon — a generous amount of saffron by volume; a good pinch of threads, crumbled, gives the colour and perfume intended.
- Buy the tongue fresh, not curedPickled or corned tongue is also sold, and it would fight the saffron and demi-glace badly. Ask a butcher for a fresh, uncured tongue, typically 2 to 4 lb. Rinse and pat dry before salting.
- MirepoixThe book assumes you know it: roughly equal parts diced onion, carrot and celery, often with a bay leaf and thyme. About two cups total suits a tongue this size.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; period ranges were rarely calibrated and cooks judged heat by feel. For a covered braise of this kind a modern oven at around 325F works: a bare simmer, never a rolling boil, or the meat tightens.
- Time to tenderness, not the clockTwo and a half hours suits a small tongue; a 4 lb one often needs three or more. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance, not when the timer says so.
- SkinningThe cold-water plunge is to make the tongue handleable. Do not let it go stone cold — the rough outer skin peels away cleanly while the tongue is still warm and grips tightly once chilled. Trim the gristle and small bones at the root end.
- The spaghetti timing is wrong for modern pastaThe spaghetti timing is long for modern pasta -- Twenty-five minutes reflects period practice, when pasta was routinely boiled far longer than now. Today's spaghetti generally wants 8 to 10 minutes, and since it goes back into the sauce for another five, pull it two minutes short of al dente.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce and brown stock reduced together; a rich reduced brown sauce. A cup of good commercial demi-glace, or strongly reduced beef stock with a little tomato, stands in. The truffle is optional; the dish works without it, and a slice of dried porcini soaked in the braise adds depth for less money.
- YieldA whole tongue on a bed of spaghetti serves six to eight as a main course. The braising liquid, skimmed and strained, is the sauce — do not discard it with the vegetables.
"Milanaise" in a professional kitchen of this period was largely shorthand for a fixed garnish rather than a place of origin: macaroni or spaghetti bound with tomato and cheese, garnished with julienne of ham, tongue, mushroom and truffle. Escoffier codified a milanaise garniture along these lines, and it turns up in English and American hotel books attached to everything from veal chops to timbales; the saffron here is often explained as a nod to Milan and its risotto, though that association is traditional rather than documented. Beef tongue was ordinary butcher's meat rather than a luxury cut, and it rewarded the long moist cooking that a coal range could supply all afternoon. What marks the dish as restaurant cooking is not the cut but the demi-glace and the truffle.