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Beef Tongue with Olives
(Lingua di bue alle olive) Scald the tongue and peel off the skin. Then put it back to boil until fully cooked.
Melt a piece of butter and brown half a medium sized onion cut in slices. When the onion is browned remove it from the butter and dilute in the latter a teaspoonful of flour. When the flour begins to brown, thin it with one or two cups of soup stock hot and passed through a sieve. Mix and boil for ten minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper.
When the sauce is prepared place the tongue in the saucepan containing it and let it cook again on a low fire for about an hour, turning it over frequently and keeping it moistened with the gravy. Cut some olives in a spiral to remove the stone and place it in the saucepan with the tongue. This becomes more tasty if left with the olives for one or two days. 156
A straightforward braise that hinges on two things the original assumes you already know: how long a beef tongue actually takes to become tender, and that the skin comes off while it is hot.
- Peel while hotThe instruction to "scald the tongue and peel off the skin" works only on a hot tongue; once it cools the tough outer membrane grips and tears. Many cooks find it easier to simmer the tongue fully first, then peel under cold running water immediately after lifting it out.
- Real cooking time"Boil until fully cooked" means roughly 2½ to 3½ hours at a bare simmer for a 3-4 lb beef tongue, or about 1½ hours under pressure. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance; the hour in the sauce that follows is for flavour, so do the tenderising in the first boil.
- Soup stockThe "soup stock hot and passed through a sieve" is the general meat broth a kitchen of the period kept on hand; the recipe does not say what it was made from. Unsalted or low-sodium beef stock is a workable modern equivalent, and the recipe is explicit that it goes into the flour hot, which also keeps the sauce from lumping.
- The onion is flavouring, not an ingredientThe sliced half onion is browned in butter and then discarded — it perfumes the fat before the flour goes in. Do not leave it in unless you want onion in the finished sauce.
- Sauce quantityA teaspoon of flour to one or two cups of stock gives a very thin gravy by modern standards, closer to a pan jus. If you want something that coats the slices, use a tablespoon of flour to a tablespoon of butter and reduce the stock at the end.
- Cutting olives in a spiralCutting a spiral strip from the whole olive removes the stone while the olive keeps its shape, so it unwinds on the plate. The recipe does not specify a type; brine-cured green olives, drained and rinsed, are the usual choice for this dish.
- The one- or two-day restThe improvement is real: the tongue absorbs the olive-scented gravy overnight. Cool it quickly, keep it covered in the refrigerator, and reheat gently to a full simmer before serving — a 1919 cook would have used a cold larder, which is not an option now.
- Serving and yieldA whole beef tongue serves 6 to 8. Slice it thinly across the grain, on the diagonal, starting from the thick end, and spoon the olive sauce over.
Beef tongue was a standard second-course meat in Italian domestic cooking well into the twentieth century — cheap, large, and gelatinous enough to reward long moist cooking. The pairing with green olives is a familiar Italian treatment for rich, fatty cuts, the brine cutting through the unctuousness of the meat. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book, published in New York in 1919, was aimed at American households curious about Italian cooking, and the recipe leans on the general "soup stock" any well-run kitchen of the day kept simmering rather than specifying a broth. The note that the dish improves after a day or two with the olives is a reminder of how much of this cooking was planned around a cold larder and the assumption that a large cut would be eaten across several meals.