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Stewed Liver with Mushrooms
Melt 1 tablespoon Crisco and add 1 1/2 tablespoons flour. Brown by long slow cooking. Add salt and pepper and 2 cups water. Cook till as thick as good cream. Have 1 pound of calf's liver cut into 2 inch cubes. Pour boiling water over them and drain immediately. Drop these into brown sauce and cook slowly 10 or 12 minutes. They must not cook rapidly nor too long. In the meantime peel some mushrooms if they are fresh and require such treatment, and drop into melted Crisco and allow to simmer. Just before taking up liver add mushrooms.
A simple brown-sauce stew from a Crisco promotional cookbook. The whole thing hinges on heat control: calf's liver turns grainy and dry the moment it is pushed past medium.
- The hinge: gentle heat, short timeTen to twelve minutes at a bare simmer is the whole instruction. Liver protein tightens and goes livery-dry above a gentle simmer, so keep the sauce barely moving and pull it as soon as the cubes are firm and faintly pink at the centre.
- CriscoStill sold, and still hydrogenated vegetable shortening, though reformulated to cut trans fat. Butter, lard or a neutral oil all work here; the original specifies it because the book was written to sell the product.
- The brown roux"Brown by long slow cooking" means giving the flour and fat a patient spell over low to medium-low heat, stirring, until it smells nutty and darkens towards the colour of weak coffee; ten minutes or more is not unusual. Rushing it gives a raw-flour taste; scorching it gives bitterness and no thickening power.
- "As thick as good cream"Pouring cream, not whipped: it should coat a spoon thinly and run off. One and a half tablespoons flour to two cups water gives a light sauce, so expect to reduce it a few minutes.
- Why the boiling waterScalding and draining the liver firms the surface and rinses away blood, which would otherwise cloud and slightly sour the sauce. It is a quick dip, not a blanch -- the recipe says to drain immediately.
- Cutting the liverTwo-inch cubes are large for liver; 1 inch cooks more evenly in the time given. Peel off the thin outer membrane first or the pieces will curl.
- Peeling mushroomsField mushrooms of the period were often mature, with tough skins and grit. Cultivated button or cremini mushrooms need only a wipe and a trim; slice them thickly and simmer in fat until they release their liquid and it cooks away.
- Yield and servingA pound of liver serves three, or four as part of a larger meal. It wants something to hold the sauce: mashed potatoes, buttered noodles or toast.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, one of the cookbooks Procter & Gamble commissioned to promote Crisco after its 1911 introduction, which is why a plain liver stew opens with a branded fat rather than butter or drippings. Calf's liver was generally regarded as the choicest of the organ meats -- cheaper than steak but dearer than beef liver -- and turns up regularly in early twentieth-century American menu planners as a mid-week dish that felt substantial without being extravagant. A brown sauce built on a slow-cooked flour roux can be read as a household simplification of the French sauce espagnole, here made with water instead of stock and without the long reduction, a shortcut common in American cookbooks of the era.