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Calf's Tongue, Italienne
Slice and place in a braising pan half a carrot, half an onion, two sliced leeks, one branch each celery and parsley, with one bay leaf and one clove, adding a tablespoon melted lard; gently brown for ten minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Place three very fresh calves' tongues over the vegetables. Season with a teaspoon salt and half a teaspoon pepper. Moisten with half pint water, one gill demi-glace and one gill tomato sauce. Cover the pan and let boil for five minutes. Remove, take up the tongues, carefully skin them, trim neatly and split in two lengthwise. Arrange in a baking dish. Boil the sauce on the range for ten minutes, then strain through a Chinese strainer into a saucepan, adding ten finely chopped, canned mushrooms, two tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley and a tablespoon sherry; thoroughly mix, boil for five minutes, and pour the sauce over the tongues. Sprinkle a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over, set to bake in oven for fifteen minutes. Remove and send to the table in the same dish.
A classic braise-then-gratin treatment of calves' tongues, written for a professional kitchen with stock and sauces already on hand. One timing in the original will not work as printed.
- The five-minute boil is not enoughA calf's tongue is dense muscle and needs to simmer, covered, until a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance — roughly 2 to 3 hours depending on size. The skin only slips off a fully cooked tongue, so the instruction to skin after five minutes gives the game away; treat the braise as a long one and check the interior reaches at least 160F before skinning.
- GillOne gill is half a cup, so the moistening liquid is 1 cup water, 1/2 cup demi-glace and 1/2 cup tomato sauce. Top up with water or stock during the long braise if the pan threatens to go dry.
- Demi-glaceIn the professional kitchens of the period this meant espagnole (brown sauce) reduced with brown stock, made in-house. Good jarred demi-glace or a concentrated glace base works; if you use a salty commercial base, cut back the teaspoon of salt and season at the end.
- Chinese strainerA chinois — the conical fine-mesh strainer. Any fine sieve does the job; press the vegetables lightly to extract flavour but do not force the pulp through, or the sauce loses its gloss.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For a fifteen-minute gratin that browns the Parmesan without drying the sauce, use 400F, or finish under the broiler for two or three minutes once the dish is hot through.
- Canned mushroomsPeriod canned mushrooms were firm button caps packed in brine, milder and saltier than fresh. Ten of them chopped is roughly half a cup; fresh cremini, sauteed first to drive off water, give a better result in the same quantity.
- Melted lardA tablespoon of lard for the vegetable base is authentic and gives the right savour. Butter, or half butter and half oil, browns the mirepoix just as well.
- Yield and servingThree tongues split lengthwise makes six portions. Serve straight from the gratin dish as directed, with boiled potatoes or buttered noodles to take the sauce; the dish reheats well but the crumb-and-cheese top will need another pass of high heat.
Tongue was standard middle-class eating on both sides of the Atlantic — cheap, gelatinous, and rewarding of the long moist cooking that coal ranges did easily. The label Italienne in the French professional vocabulary that this book inherits does not mean the dish is Italian: sauce italienne is a brown sauce finished with chopped mushrooms, and here the tomato, breadcrumbs and grated Parmesan reinforce the reference. Finishing a braise au gratin under crumbs and cheese belongs to the same restaurant logic that gave the period its long lists of named garnishes — French kitchen technique wearing a foreign name.