When I used neat or beef tongue to make seventeenth century mince pies at Christmas, I was impressed and have been looking to use that meat, or similar, in other period recipes. I was able to find some lamb tongues and there are a few different cookery books in the 1600s that give instructions for preparing mutton or sheep tongues. Most are relatively simple but one had an interesting, quite savoury, sauce and, from a historical perspective, interesting accompaniments. Not surprisingly, given the savoury nature of it, it comes from François Pierre de La Varenne, and can be found both in his ground-breaking Le Cuisinier françois (1651) and the English translation – The French Cook (1653).
So, I present an adaption of La Varenne’s “Langue de mouton rosties,” translated as “Mutton tongues ro[a]sted.” After the recipe, I will talk a bit about the departures I made, some of which were fairly significant, though I think I kept things in the spirit of the original. One of the reasons I am interested in the cookery of this specific period is the changes that were taking place: there was a movement from medieval to early modern cookery. Le Cuisinier françois is where we find several of those new elements in print. To me at least, these instructions for cooking sheep’s tongues represents some of those cookery evolutions, and I will end this entry by briefing outlining what I mean.
Lamb tongues broiled with bread sauce and mushrooms (from Langues de mouton roties)
Serves 3 as a starter
Ingredients
For Stock
- 3 (about 150g) of lamb tongues, well washed
- 100g of mushrooms, cleaned
- 2 green onions, bottom halves only, ends removed and chopped roughly
- ½ tsp whole peppercorns
For Sauce
- 75g butter
- 1 ¼ cup of lamb tongue stock from above, divided (More if sauce is too thick.)
- 40g breadcrumbs
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 2 green onions, green top halves only, remaining from above, chopped fine.
- 3 tbsp loosely packed parsley, leaves picked whole
For Broiling and Finishing
- ¼ cup of stock from above
- 25g of breadcrumbs
- ¼ tsp salt
- butter for frying
- 100g of mushrooms, cleaned
- 1 tbsp of capers, chopped if large
- ½ a lemon cut into wedges
Instructions
Begin by cooking your tongues and thereby making a stock. Place your tongues, 100g of mushrooms, whole peppercorns, and the white halves of the green onions in a medium pan.
Remove tongues to cool. When cool, it should be easy to peel away the top a layer of tough skin. When peeled, set aside.
Pass stock through a fine mesh strainer into a large bowl. Set aside stock and discard remaining solids. You will probably have more stock than is used in this recipe, reserve it for any other use.
Begin making your sauce by melting your 75g of butter in a saucepan over medium high heat.
When melted, add ½ cup of the stock and allow to boil and reduce for about 3 minutes.
Add your salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
Add your 40g of breadcrumbs, which will instantly thicken the sauce.
Add the remaining ¾ cup of stock, a little at a time to keep it loose and pourable.
Add the chopped green onion tops and parsley.
Reduce heat to low to keep the sauce warm but do not thicken it beyond pourable.
Prepare a baking sheet lined with tin foil and set your oven to a medium broil. (If your oven does not have a variable broil, place your tongues on the lowest rack in the coming step.) Alternatively, you could grill your tongue on a medium barbeque or grill pan for 1 minute on each side.
Place remaining 25g of breadcrumbs on a plate.
Add ¼ tsp salt to these and mix together.
Put ¼ cup of the stock in a small bowl.
Slice your lamb tongues in half, lengthwise.
Dip your tongue halves one at a time in the stock and then in the salted breadcrumbs. Place on the foiled baking sheet cut side up.
Place breaded tongues in the oven on the top rack and watch closely for 2 minutes. The breadcrumbs should be brown and the tongues themselves just taking on a little colour. Turn over and repeat.
When crisp on both sides, remove tongues and place in the sauce on the stove. Turn up heat to medium low.
While they are simmering, in a small fry pan, melt some butter and fry the remaining 100g of mushrooms until golden.
Remove your tongue halves to a cutting board.
Check your sauce for seasoning and add more stock if too thick. Pour onto a serving plate.
Place tongues on top of the sauce, making sure to keep one side crispy. Add fried mushrooms, scatter the capers over and serve with lemon wedges.
Notes on Adaptation
There was a combination of guesswork, experience and inexpert translation that went into this adaption.
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| A 1673 third edition of The French Cook translation I had a chance to photograph |
Neither La Varenne nor the English translator give much in terms of quantities once again, so I worked from experience, measuring as I went.
I used lamb tongues not mutton or sheep but possibly the most significant departure I took from the French author’s recipe was the initial preparation of those tongues. Almost every modern recipe and several period ones boil then peel the tongues before cooking them in any other way. La Varenne begins by saying to “Habillez” them, which is translated correctly as “dress” in The French Cook. I am not sure whether that might be shorthand for the usual cooking method.
That aside, I took a few more liberties when I did boil them. The additions of mushrooms, peppercorns and the whites of green onions were my own, but those ingredients were used elsewhere in the dish, so reenforced the flavour profile. It also produced a very nice broth, which the actual recipe does call for later.
Once you “dress” and halve the tongues, the next step in English is to “bestrew” them. This is not quite the same as what the French original says: the word it uses is – “arrosez.” This means “to water” as in “water your plants” or maybe in this context – “to baste.” The purpose for doing this in both versions is so that the coming breadcrumbs and salt will stick or hold to the tongues. I had made some very nice stock and had plenty, so I used that.
Once so dredged, I broiled my tongue as it is very much winter and I, therefore, have no access to a grill. Grilling would be closer to the original recipe.
In the sauce, the French recipe calls for “siboulles” (spelled modernly “ciboulles”) and the English one renders that as “chibols” (modernly “cibols”) which comes from the same root. Both words mean a plant called a Welsh onion, which is similar to green onions. The English text also calls for “chippings,” which is slightly vague, but the French is “chappelure” – clearly breadcrumbs.
Getting the sauce to a decent thickness was a bit of experimentation but I liked the result in the end, so I give you the different steps I took.
Once finished making the sauce and grilling the tongues, The French Cook says to “stove” the tongues with the sauce, while La Varenne says to “mittoner” – simmer – them. I did this while cooking the garnishing mushrooms.
It is winter, so I did use those garnishes as the recipe recommends and overall, I really liked this dish. The tongues have the slightest lamb flavour as compared to beef tongues, which adds an interesting layer. What is essentially a bread sauce is made savoury by the great stock, the butter, and the onions. The nutmeg adds background warmth like it can in something like a Bolognese sauce. Capers and lemon juice provide a brightness that cuts through the rich sauce and meatiness. It is kind of strange to dredge something in breadcrumbs and then add it to a sauce but if you are careful, you can keep the top crispy, which gives some textural variation.
Historical Importance of These Lamb Tongues
This is a savoury dish, there is nothing sweet added and the spicing is kept basic and subtle. The recorded cookery across Medieval Europe generally used a lot of spice and sugar, often, in my opinion, not for the taste but as a demonstration of conspicuous consumption. Most spices and sugar were imported and expensive; cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, and similar fill so many of the dishes. It was upper class cookery instructions that were written down and survive; therefore, the motives for preparing foods went well beyond making the food taste good.
In the seventeenth century, that began to change slowly, first, and especially, in France as demonstrated by Le Cuisinier françois. The idea was to make foods taste like themselves, not a sugar-spice mix that showed how rich you were. Cooks began, therefore, to pick accompaniments that highlighted the main ingredient; more fresh herbs were used along with salt and pepper. These tongues are a step in that direction, the nutmeg can be used subtly to highlight the savouriness of the meat and the other ingredients provide a modern taste profile. I will return to La Varenne to explore these evolutions in future entries, I am sure.
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| A page from the above copy of The French Cook showing multiple owners and/or readers. |
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