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Tongue Sandwich No. 2
Mince boiled tongue, add a teaspoonful of melted butter, a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, a dash of celery salt, and when mixed place between thinly buttered white or brown bread. Serve with a sweet pickle.
A spread rather than a sliced-meat sandwich, and it depends entirely on the tongue being well cooked and well seasoned before it ever reaches the bread. The original gives no quantity of meat, so the ratio is yours to set.
- How much tongueThe recipe names only the seasonings. A teaspoon of butter and a tablespoon of catsup will dress about a cup of minced tongue, roughly 6 oz, enough for two or three sandwiches. Scale the catsup up if you mince more, or the mixture stays dry.
- Boiled tongueA whole beef tongue weighs 3-4 lb and needs two to three hours at a bare simmer with aromatics until a skewer slides in easily. The skin peels off in one sheet while the tongue is still hot; once cold it grips and you will lose meat to it. Trim the root end of gristle and fat before mincing.
- Buying it ready cookedA butcher's cooked or pickled tongue works and skips the long simmer. Pickled tongue is already salty, so hold the celery salt until you have tasted the mix.
- Mince, not grindChop by hand to a coarse dice or pulse briefly in a processor. Tongue is fine-grained and turns to paste quickly, which makes a filling that tastes of catsup and nothing else.
- Tomato catsup then and nowCatsups of this period were often thinner, sharper and more heavily spiced, with clove and allspice, than most modern ketchup, though recipes and brands varied. A tablespoon of today's ketchup with a few drops of vinegar will get you closer to that sharper note.
- Celery saltStill sold, still made of ground celery seed and salt, and still potent. A dash means about an eighth of a teaspoon; more and it dominates.
- The bread'Brown bread' most likely means a plain wholemeal loaf here, though the text does not specify and steamed Boston brown bread was also used for sandwiches. Butter the slices thinly right to the edge so the catsup does not soak through.
- ServingThe sweet pickle is not decoration. Tongue is rich and faintly sweet itself, and the sharp-sweet pickle is what keeps the sandwich from feeling heavy.
Sandwich books of this era treat tongue as a staple rather than a curiosity: it was cheap, it kept well once boiled and pressed, and a single tongue yielded enough meat for days of luncheons and picnic baskets. Ready-cooked and pickled tongues were standard butcher's stock, and pressed tongue in a mould was a fixture of the cold table. The tomato catsup and celery salt belong to the familiar repertoire of bottled condiments used to lift plain cold meat.