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To Pickle Tongues for Boiling

A method for pickling beef tongues with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and optional sal-prunella, then boiling until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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To Pickle Tongues for Boiling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut off the root of the tongues, leaving a little of the kernel and fat.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and let drain overnight.

Cure

  1. Mix 1 cup of common salt, 1 cup of coarse sugar, and ½ cup of saltpetre for each tongue.

  2. Rub the mixture into the tongues daily for a week, adding another heaped cup of salt after the first week.

  3. If rubbed daily, the tongues will be ready in two weeks; if only turned in the pickle, they will keep for four to five weeks.

Dry and finish

  1. When drying, label with the date and tie it on.

  2. Smoke or dry the tongues plain as preferred.

Cook

  1. To cook, boil the tongues until extremely tender, about five hours.

  2. If they are hard, soak for three to four hours before boiling.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Tongues
The main meat; curing and long boiling turn it firm yet tender.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while preserving it during curing.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt and softens the harsh edge of the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps keep the cured meat's pink colour and inhibits spoilage bacteria.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in daily. Salt and saltpetre must penetrate evenly for the curing to work. Skipping days lets the meat spoil or cure unevenly, while the extra salt after the first week keeps the cure strong enough to preserve it.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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