Larded Liver
Lard a calf's liver with bacon or ham, season with salt and pepper, tie a cord around the liver to keep in shape, put in a kettle with one quart of cold water, a quarter of a pound of bacon, one onion chopped fine, and one tea-spoon sweet marjoram; let simmer slowly for two hours, pour off gravy into gravy-dish, and brown liver in kettle. Serve with the gravy. -Mrs. E. L. Fay, Washington Heights, New York City.
A braise rather than a fry: a whole calf's liver, threaded with bacon, simmered in a small amount of water and then browned in the dry pot. Most of the work is in the larding and in keeping the pot below a boil.
- The hinge: keep it at a bare simmerLiver seizes and turns grainy the moment the liquid boils. Hold the pot at the point where a bubble breaks every second or two, lid ajar, and the two hours will leave the meat sliceable rather than crumbly.
- Larding, in practiceA larding needle is the traditional tool; lacking one, pierce the liver at intervals with a thin knife and push in strips of bacon or ham cut about a quarter-inch thick and the length of your finger. The fat bastes the interior, which is the whole point — calf's liver has almost none of its own.
- Sourcing the liverA whole calf's liver runs roughly 3 to 4 lb and is an order from a butcher, not a supermarket item. Beef liver is the usual substitute but is stronger and coarser; if you use it, soak it in milk for an hour first and expect a more assertive dish.
- Two hours is not a mistakeIt looks alarming beside the modern rule of two minutes a side, but that rule is for thin slices over high heat. A whole larded liver held at a simmer behaves like a pot roast. Test at 90 minutes with a skewer: it should meet steady, even resistance, not softness.
- The quart of waterOne quart will not cover a whole liver, and is not meant to. Turn the liver once at the halfway mark so both sides sit in the liquid, and check that the pot has not gone dry — the finished gravy should be a scant cup or so of concentrated braising liquid.
- Sweet marjoramOne teaspoon most likely means dried, though sweet marjoram was also commonly grown fresh in kitchen gardens of the period. Fresh marjoram is milder; use about a tablespoon chopped, added in the last half hour.
- Browning at the endLift the liver out, pour off every drop of liquid, and return the meat to the hot dry kettle with the trimmings of bacon fat. Dry surfaces are essential — pat the liver with a towel first or it will steam instead of colouring.
- Serving and yieldRemove the cord, slice across the grain about a third of an inch thick, and pass the gravy separately as written. A 3 lb liver serves six to eight; mashed potato or boiled onions would suit.
Larding — sewing strips of pork fat into lean meat — was standard kitchen practice in the era before well-marbled beef, and calf's liver, being almost fatless, was one of the cuts that most needed it. Braising a whole liver in this way was closer to European farmhouse cooking than to the quick-fried liver and bacon of American diners. Buckeye Cookery (1877, out of Marysville, Ohio) was assembled from contributions sent in by named housekeepers, and the attribution to a Mrs. Fay of Washington Heights shows how far that network of correspondents reached beyond Ohio. Organ meats appear throughout the book's Meats section without apology, as they would in any household that bought a whole animal and expected to use it.