Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Tongue

A tongue boiled slowly, seasoned with coarse sea salt, optionally browned with butter, served hot or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Boiled Tongue

Ingredients

Directions

Boil

  1. Place the tongue in a pot and cover the pot with cold water.

  2. Skim the surface as it comes to a boil.

  3. Cook slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Remove the skin.

  5. Return the tongue to the pot.

  6. Season with coarse sea salt.

  7. Cook until very tender.

  8. Let it cool in the cooking liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, let the water boil away.

  2. Add butter.

  3. Fry until browned.

  4. Serve hot or cold.

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

Beef tongue
Long slow simmering breaks down tough connective tissue, leaving the meat tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown when fried.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until very tender. Tongue is a tough muscle rich in connective tissue. Gentle simmering over a long time converts that collagen to gelatin, which makes the meat tender. A hard boil can toughen the meat and break it apart, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes