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Sauce for Cold Tongue
A delicious sauce for cold tongue is prepared by grating one or more peeled cucumbers, pressing out as much of the juice as possible and adding one-half cupful of the dry pulp to one cupful of mayonnaise.
A two-ingredient cold sauce that stands or falls on how thoroughly the cucumber is drained. Everything else is assembly.
- The hinge: press the pulp dryGrated cucumber is mostly water, and any that stays behind will thin the mayonnaise and make it look broken. The recipe says only to press out as much juice as possible; salting the gratings lightly and letting them sit for ten minutes before squeezing them in a clean towel or pressing them in a sieve makes that easier.
- How much cucumberOne or more peeled cucumbers is vague because yield varies. A large field cucumber grates to roughly a cup of pulp before pressing and about half that after, so one cucumber will usually give the half cupful called for.
- SeedsOlder cucumber varieties tended to have coarser seeds and more bitterness than the strains bred since; halving and scraping out the seed core before grating does no harm, and with an English or Persian cucumber it is barely necessary.
- MayonnaiseThe book assumes a homemade oil-and-yolk mayonnaise, thicker and eggier than jarred. Commercial mayonnaise works, though a spoonful of sour cream or a squeeze of lemon brings it closer to the intended tang.
- Yield and servingAbout a cup and a half, enough for six to eight servings of sliced cold tongue. Serve it cold and freshly made, spooned beside the meat rather than over it.
- KeepingCucumber continues to weep even after pressing, so this is a same-day sauce. It will separate slightly in the refrigerator overnight; stir before using.
- Beyond tongueThe same sauce sits happily with cold salmon, poached chicken or any cold boiled meat.
Cold tongue was a staple of the late-Victorian and Edwardian sideboard: a whole beef tongue was simmered, pressed under a weight, and sliced through the week for luncheons, suppers and picnics, and cookbooks of the era supplied a range of sauces to go with it. Cucumber stirred into mayonnaise belongs to the same family as the cucumber-dressed sauces served with cold fish. That mayonnaise appears here as a ready ingredient, called for by the cupful, suggests it was something the household expected to have already made and on hand.