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Tongue Moulded in Aspic Jelly
Boil a pickled tongue until tender, remove the skin and set aside to cool. Trim and cut in thin slices and press them together to retain the shape of the tongue. Make aspic jelly enough to fill the mould without the tongue. Set the mould in a pan of ice water and cover the bottom to the depth of one-fourth inch with aspic. Decorate with olives, capers, lemon or whatever is desired. Set the tongue in the center of the mould, pour in more aspic to fill the mould and more decorations. Serve with lettuce and mayonnaise dressing or Tartar Bernaise or Hollandaise sauce.
This is an assembly recipe: the work is in the tongue and the aspic, both of which the book assumes you already know how to make. A few practical notes fill the gaps.
- The tongue itselfA pickled (brine-cured) beef tongue of 3-4 lb needs 3 to 4 hours at a bare simmer, until a skewer slides in with no resistance. Peel the skin while it is still hot; once cold it clings and tears the meat.
- Curing not includedThe recipe starts with an already-pickled tongue, bought from a butcher. If you cannot find one, use a plain fresh tongue and simmer it with aromatics rather than attempting a home cure without measured salt and nitrite.
- Aspic jellyPeriod aspic was clarified veal or beef stock, gelatinous enough to set on its own. With modern stock, a rough starting point is about 1 tablespoon (1 packet, 7 g) powdered gelatin per 2 cups of well-flavoured liquid, erring on the side of more if the mould must be turned out cleanly. Season it assertively; cold mutes salt and acid.
- How much you need"Enough to fill the mould without the tongue" means the mould's full capacity: measure it with water first and subtract nothing, since the surplus becomes the layer around the meat. For a 1.5-quart mould, that is about 6 cups.
- Ice water instead of a fridgeThe pan of ice water stands in for the refrigerator. A refrigerator works, but the ice bath is genuinely faster for setting the first quarter-inch layer, which must be firm before the decorations go on or they will float.
- Decorations go on upside downThe bottom of the mould becomes the top of the finished dish. Lay olive slices, capers and lemon face down in the set aspic, then brush a thin spoonful of cool liquid aspic over them to fix them before adding the bulk.
- Pressing the slicesSlicing the tongue and pressing it back into shape gives a mould that carves neatly at table. Wrap the reassembled tongue tightly in cheesecloth and chill under a weight for an hour before it goes into the mould.
- Unmoulding and servingDip the mould in warm water for 10 seconds and invert onto a chilled platter. A 1.5-quart mould serves 8 to 10 as a cold lunch dish.
Cold moulded meats in savoury jelly were a fixture of the late-Victorian and Edwardian table, where a glazed, decorated aspic signalled a cook with time, ice and a clear stock to spare. The word aspic is generally traced to French, and cookery writers have long linked it to the asp - either for the snake-like coil of the old ring moulds or for the cold of the jelly - though the etymology is traditional rather than settled. Pickled tongue was an economical, keepable cut, which is why a book like this can open with "boil a pickled tongue" and say no more. It appears here in the sandwich chapter, alongside other cold meats.