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9 PDFsam MeyerWhatisliterature

This document provides instructions for preparing beef tongue and heart. It recommends cutting the tongue nearly through at the hump parallel to the base but diagonally toward the tip for better looking slices. It notes that heart is firm and dry and best prepared by slow cooking, and can be used like ground meat in recipes. It also provides some recipes for dishes using tongue and heart.

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34 views1 page

9 PDFsam MeyerWhatisliterature

This document provides instructions for preparing beef tongue and heart. It recommends cutting the tongue nearly through at the hump parallel to the base but diagonally toward the tip for better looking slices. It notes that heart is firm and dry and best prepared by slow cooking, and can be used like ground meat in recipes. It also provides some recipes for dishes using tongue and heart.

Uploaded by

fordownload use
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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8 Jim Meyer

To carve tongue, cut nearly through at the hump parallel to the base. But
toward the tip, better looking slices can be made if the cut is diagonal.

[Recipes follow: Boiled Fresh Beef Tongue; Beef Tongue with Raisin Sauce;
Boiled Smoked, Corned or Pickled Tongue; Tongue Baked in Creole Sauce;
Tongue in Aspic. Under Boiled Fresh Beef Tongue, the writers recommend that
tongue be served with Hot Mustard Sauce, Piquant Sauce, or Horseradish Sauce.]

About Heart
Heart, which is firm and rather dry, is best prepared by slow cooking. It is
muscle, not organ meat, and so may be used in many recipes calling for ground
meat. Before cooking, wash it well, removing fat, arteries, veins and blood, and
dry carefully. A 4- to 5-pound beef heart will serve 6; a veal heart will serve one.

[Recipes follow: Baked Stuffed Heart with Apple and Onion Dressing; Braised
Heart Slices in Sour Sauce.]

Although this text certainly bears testimony to the personality of the writers and hints at some
metaphoric interpretations (“Lucky indeed is the cook with the gift of tongues”), most speakers of
English would not regard this work as a strong example of literature. It may be read aesthetically
by some readers, but most would read it efferently, for the information contained; similarly, it is
clear that the writers intend for us to read it for its information.
On the other hand, Elaine Magarrell’s poem, “Joy of Cooking”—although strikingly similar
to the cookbook excerpt above—is closer to the prototype:

I have prepared my sister’s tongue,


scrubbed and skinned it,
trimmed the roots, small bones, and gristle.
Carved through the hump it slices thin and neat.
Best with horseradish
and economical—it probably will grow back.
Next time perhaps a creole sauce
or mold of aspic?

I will have my brother’s heart,


which is firm and rather dry,
slow cooked. It resembles muscle
more than organ meat
and needs an apple-onion stuffing
to make it interesting at all.
Although beef heart serves six
my brother’s heart barely feeds two.
I could also have it braised
and served in sour sauce.

Here the metaphoric sense of ‘tongue’ and ‘heart’ strike us immediately. We begin to explore
several weak implicatures: ‘tongue’ as the organ of speech, a sharp tongue, and so on. The words
are nearly identical to the cookbook, yet we are reacting quite differently. As readers, we are

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