To Pickle Tongues, &C
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the tongues
Cut some of the root away from the tongues and make an incision in the underside.
Rub the tongues well with coarse sea salt and cover them in a tub or pan for four days.
Cure
Pound together 2 parts saltpetre, 1 part common salt, 1 part coarse sea salt, and 1 part moist sugar.
Rub the tongues with the mixture and place them back in the pan.
Turn the tongues every two days until pickled, which will take about ten days.
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
- Large fresh tongues
- The main meat that the cure penetrates and turns into pickled tongue.
- Saltpetre
- Helps the tongues keep their pink colour during curing.
- Common salt
- Draws out moisture and seasons the meat while curing it.
- Moist sugar
- Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cure.
The step that matters
Turning the tongues every two days. Turning keeps every surface in contact with the cure, so salt and saltpetre penetrate evenly and the meat pickles uniformly rather than unevenly at the bottom of the pan.
“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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