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To Fry Calf's Liver
Cut the liver into thin slices. Roll in flour and fry brown with lard. Season with pepper, salt and a little parsley. Keep the pan covered till well done.
A four-line recipe that assumes you already know what calf's liver should look like coming out of the pan. The one instruction to disregard is the last one.
- Do not cover the panCovering traps steam, and the flour coating turns to paste while the liver poaches itself grey. Fry uncovered over fairly high heat so the crust sets and browns.
- "Till well done" is the wrong targetLiver is muscle-poor and iron-rich; held past medium it turns dry, grainy and metallic. Slices cut about 1/4 inch thick need roughly 60-90 seconds a side, until the surface is browned and the centre is still faintly rosy.
- Slice thickness"Thin slices" is not specified; about 1/4 inch, cut on a slight angle, suits the method. Anything thicker will be overcooked at the edges before the middle warms through; anything paper-thin is hard to keep juicy.
- Trim the membraneCalf's liver arrives with a fine outer membrane and internal ducts that neither dissolve nor soften. Peel the membrane away and cut around the tubes before slicing or the pieces will curl and toughen in the pan.
- LardLard was the ordinary frying fat of the period and still works well at this heat. Clarified butter, bacon fat or a neutral oil with a knob of butter added at the end are all direct substitutes; whole butter alone will scorch.
- Salt after, flour just beforeDredge only as the pan comes to heat, since flour left sitting on liver goes damp and sloughs off. Salt on the plate rather than in the flour, so surface moisture does not draw out and prevent browning.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf parsley, chopped and scattered off the heat, keeps its flavour; stirred into hot fat it simply blackens.
- YieldFigure 4-6 oz of liver per person, so about 1 1/2 lb serves four. Work in batches and keep the pan crowded-free, or the slices steam rather than fry.
Calf's liver held a different rank from other offal in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century kitchens: it was the delicate, expensive variety meat, milder and paler than ox liver, and it turns up in general household books like this one without apology or explanation. The flour-dredge-and-fry treatment is a standard period approach to thin cuts of meat, and the instruction to keep the pan covered may reflect a concern with cooking meat through. Liver and bacon, or liver with fried onions, are common companions in British and American cookery of the same period, and though this version mentions neither, the parsley finish points to the plainer end of the tradition.