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To Pickle Tongues

A preserved tongue pickled with treacle, salt, and saltpetre.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the tongues clean in water and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Cut the skin from the sides near the blade to allow the salt to penetrate.

Cure

  1. Sprinkle the tongues with salt and let them sit overnight.

  2. After draining, mix treacle, common salt, saltpetre, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Rub the mixture into the tongues.

  4. Repeat daily for a week or ten days.

  5. Add another tablespoon of salt.

  6. Continue turning the tongues daily.

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 meat being cured; salt draws out moisture and firms its texture.
Treacle
Adds sweetness and a dark, rich flavour to the cure.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep a pink colour during curing.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and helps preserve the meat.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in and turning the tongues daily. Salt can only work where it touches the meat, so the mixture must be rubbed in thoroughly and the tongues turned each day. This spreads the cure evenly and keeps the surface from curing unevenly.

“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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