Recipe no. 281 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 137.
Ingredients
- beef tongue
- fine salt
- saltpetre
Preparation
- PreparationBeat the tongue well with a piece of wood and prick it all over with a fork to help the brine penetrate.
- Rubbing with saltMix a strong handful of fine salt with a few pinches of saltpetre and rub the tongue until it has absorbed it.
- Curing in the dishPut the tongue in an earthenware dish on a layer of fine salt, cover it and leave in a cool place for 10 to 12 days, turning it every two days.
- Keeping the liquidKeep the brine given off by the tongue for salting other tongues.
Reboul's text
The tongue must first be well beaten with some piece of wood and pricked all over with a fork. This precaution helps the brine to penetrate and, in a way, speeds up the salting.
Put on the table a strong handful of fine salt mixed with a few pinches of saltpetre. Rub the tongue on this salt until it has absorbed nearly all of it. Then put it into an earthenware dish on a layer of fine salt; cover it likewise and leave it thus in a cool place for 10 to 12 days, turning it every two days. It is then sufficiently salted. The brine it has given off can be kept for salting other tongues.
One can also, after having beaten the tongue and rubbed it with salt and saltpetre, plunge it into a liquid brine (see that entry), leaving it to steep for about ten days. This is even preferable when one has a certain quantity to salt.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| batre | beat |
| fourqueto | fork |
| aigo-sau | brine |
| tian | earthenware dish |
| sau | fine salt |
| saupètro | saltpetre |
| sala | salt |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 281, page 137. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.