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Beef Tongue Boiled
(Lingua di bue lessa) The tongue is boiled like the beef. When half cooked remove the skin, which is not nice to see and has no nutrituous elements, although it is is served with a purèe of peas, or spinach or potatoes or beans, etc. But it can be served simply with sprigs of parsley, 155
The instructions here amount to a cross-reference: the tongue is treated like a piece of boiling beef, with one added step. A few specifics the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: peel it warmThe skin slips off cleanly only while the tongue is hot. The book says to do it at the halfway point; if you wait until the meat is cold the skin bonds to the flesh and has to be cut away, taking good meat with it.
- Actual cooking timeA whole beef tongue of 3-4 lb needs 3 to 3 1/2 hours at a bare simmer, never a rolling boil. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance. Peel and trim the gristly root end at about the 90-minute mark, then return it to the pot.
- Buying oneFresh beef tongue is a butcher's order in most places now. Do not substitute a cured or corned tongue, which is already brined and will come out far too salty if you also salt the pot.
- SaltSalt the water lightly at the start and check the broth near the end. Tongue takes salt slowly, so seasoning only the surface after slicing gives a bland interior.
- The pureesPeas, spinach, potatoes or beans, all cooked soft and passed through a sieve or food mill, then loosened with a little of the cooking broth and finished with butter. The broth is the point of contact between the meat and the vegetable; do not thin the puree with plain water.
- Serving and yieldSlice across the grain, thin at the tip and thicker toward the root. A 3 1/2 lb tongue serves six to eight. It is equally good cold the next day, pressed under a weight in the refrigerator and sliced for an antipasto with salsa verde.
Boiled tongue belongs to the same frugal tradition as the cheaper cuts and organs treated with the same care as a roast. Tongue was common urban butcher's fare in Europe and America well into the twentieth century, sold fresh or cured, and it turns up in many general cookbooks of the era; its retreat to specialty butchers is comparatively recent. The note that the skin "has no nutritious elements" reads as a period tell -- cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often justified culinary choices on nutritional grounds -- when the plainer reason for peeling a tongue is that the skin is tough and unpleasant to chew. The suggested accompaniments, a puree of peas or spinach, suggest a dish of the second course rather than the soup.