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Lamb, Liver of, to Fry
Soak the liver in cold water for half an hour. Cut it into thin slices, and boil these for ten minutes. Place them in a dry cloth to drain off the water, strew a little pepper on them, dredge flour over them, and fry in hot fat until they are brightly browned. If the flavour is liked, an onion finely minced may be fried with them, or a few rashers of bacon. Garnish with parsley, and send good brown gravy to table with the meat. Time, ten minutes to boil, eight minutes to fry. Probable cost, 8d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for two or three persons.
A Victorian treatment of lamb's liver that parboils before frying — the one step a modern cook should question. Everything else is a straightforward pan-fry.
- The boiling is the hingeTen minutes in boiling water plus eight in the pan will leave lamb's liver grey, grainy and dry. Current practice is to skip the parboil entirely and fry thin slices in hot fat for a couple of minutes a side, until browned outside and just cooked through. The recipe gives no reason for the parboil; it may have served to firm up liver of uncertain freshness, and period taste certainly ran to thoroughly cooked offal.
- The soakHalf an hour in cold water draws out blood and softens the mineral edge. Milk is the usual modern substitute and is often said to do the job more thoroughly. Either way, pat the slices completely dry before flouring or they will steam rather than brown.
- Thickness"Thin slices" means about 1/4 inch (5-6 mm). Thicker than that and the outside overcooks before the middle warms through; much thinner and the liver turns to leather almost instantly.
- Dredge with flourFlour just before the liver hits the pan, not in advance — the moisture in liver turns a resting flour coat to paste. Season the flour rather than only strewing pepper on the meat.
- The fat"Hot fat" here would most likely have meant lard or beef dripping. Any neutral oil with a knob of butter works. The pan needs to be genuinely hot; a slack pan is what makes fried liver weep.
- Bacon and onionIf you add these, cook them first and lift them out, then fry the liver in the rendered fat. Onion needs several minutes to sweeten and will scorch in the short time the liver wants.
- Brown gravyThe instruction to "send good brown gravy to table" presumes a made brown sauce available in the kitchen. Deglazing the pan with stock, a splash of wine or vinegar, and a little butter is a quick alternative.
- Cost and yieldThe stated 8d. per pound puts liver at the cheaper end of the butcher's prices of the period. One pound serves two to three, as stated — about 5 to 8 oz of liver per person.
Lamb's liver sat at the cheap end of the Victorian butcher's stall, and Cassell's, written for households counting pennies, gives a probable cost per pound here as it does throughout the book. The parboil-then-fry method turns up in nineteenth-century British offal cookery: boiling was believed to draw out impurities and make suspect meat wholesome, an idea that made real sense before reliable cold storage, when liver spoiled faster than almost anything else in the shop. The pairing with bacon is older than the book and has outlasted it; liver and bacon remained a staple of chophouses, boarding houses and pub menus in Britain well into the twentieth century. The garnish of parsley and the separate jug of brown gravy reflect the service conventions of a late-Victorian table, however humble the cut on the plate.