To Hold Your Tongue

We’re familiar with salted pork products (ham, bacon) and salted fish (cod, anchovies). But in the Middle Ages, people salted anything and everything, if they had the salt to do it with, and that was a serious consideration. Much of the salt available was unrefined sea salt, gray with impurities and often not very good at preventing spoilage.

They salted beef, not too surprisingly; eel, a little more surprisingly; mutton; and even various birds, though birds don’t really salt well because the unsaturated fat in their flesh turns rancid fairly quickly. Among the birds we know to have been salted are goose, coot (said to be good with cabbage) and various kinds of duck. Salt duck is still a famous specialty of Wales, though today it’s often salted quite lightly and not long before cooking.

Salt goat used to be a regular Welsh food too, though it has mysteriously (or maybe not mysteriously) died out. Salt beef, along with salt pork, continued to be the staple of the naval diet throughout the 19th century, and sailors understandably got tired of it. When they came upon meat in quantity, they energetically salted it down in barrels. Salted puffin and penguin were much appreciated.

In the Middle Ages, even beef tongues were salted. You’d parboil the tongues, salt them and hang them in the fireplace for the winter, then hang them in a dry place for anything from one to four years. Here’s a whole new way to envision the medieval hearth--a fireplace with a bunch of shriveled beef tongues dangling in it. Mmmm.