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Veal Tongue Braise with Spinach
Place a mirepoix, at the bottom of a braising pan, with two tablespoons leaf lard, and lightly brown on the fire for ten minutes. Add three well-trimmed, fresh veal tongues; season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Moisten with half pint broth, one gill demi-glace, a half gill tomato sauce and one tablespoon of tarragon vinegar. Cover the pan, let boil for ten minutes, then set in the oven for fifty minutes. Remove, skin the tongues; cut them into halves, lengthwise. Place a spinach, on a hot dish. Dress the tongues over the spinach, strain the gravy around and serve.
A classic braise written in professional shorthand: it assumes you already have stock, demi-glace and a spinach garnish on hand. The tongues are the easy part; the sauce components need planning.
- Gill and half pintA gill is 1/2 cup (4 fl oz), so one gill demi-glace is 1/2 cup and a half gill of tomato sauce is 1/4 cup. A half pint of broth is 1 cup — American measure, not the 20 oz British pint.
- MirepoixNo quantities are given. Figure roughly 1 cup diced onion, 1/2 cup each carrot and celery, with a bay leaf and thyme sprig, cut coarse so it does not scorch during the ten-minute browning.
- Demi-glaceThe real thing is a reduction of brown veal stock and espagnole, cooked down for hours. A good jarred demi-glace or reduced veal stock concentrate stands in; a cup of ordinary broth reduced hard will not give the same body.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the kidneys, mild and nearly neutral. Regular lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all work here — the fat is only there to brown the vegetables.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given; a moderate oven, in the region of 325F, suits a covered braise of this kind. Check the tongues at fifty minutes: they are done when a skewer meets no resistance at the thickest part. Veal tongues vary in size, so larger ones may need longer than the fifty minutes the recipe allows.
- PeelingThe hinge of the whole dish. The tough outer skin peels off cleanly only while the tongues are still hot — let them cool and it clings. Lift them out, hold with a towel, slit the skin lengthwise and strip it off, then trim the root end before halving.
- The spinach"A spinach" means a prepared spinach garnish, not raw leaves — spinach blanched, squeezed dry, chopped and finished in butter, or bound with a little cream. Allow 1 1/2 to 2 lb fresh spinach for the platter.
- YieldThree veal tongues serve six generously, each half tongue a portion. Strain the braising liquid, skim the fat and reduce briefly if it seems thin before pouring it around the dish.
Tongue occupied a respectable middle place in the old professional repertoire -- cheap enough to be everyday, but rich and firm enough to be dressed up and sent out on a platter with a sauce. Veal tongue was the refined choice, smaller and more tender than beef, and braising was a standard treatment: a bed of aromatic vegetables, a little acid to cut the fat, and a long covered cook that both cooks the meat and builds the gravy. The demi-glace and tomato sauce called for here suggest a French-trained hotel kitchen of the sort that shaped American professional cooking, where such sauces stood ready in the saucier's station and a cook could draw a gill of either without thinking. The spinach base is equally conventional -- tongue is paired with spinach or sorrel in nineteenth-century French cookery, the green's bite set against the richness of the meat.