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Liver, Devilled
Chop up one pound of calf's liver and three ounces of pickled pork; add a pinch of grated cloves and nutmeg, a small salt-spoonful of cayenne, the same of black pepper, a large tea-spoonful of salt, a grate of lemon-peel, and a half-pint of bread-crumbs. Moisten with a table-spoonful of port wine. Press all down tightly in a jar with a lid, set it in a saucepan with boiling water to three-parts cover it, and let the water boil for two hours. Then take it up, remove the lid, let it cool, turn it out, and serve cold in thin slices. Or the liver may be sliced, brushed over with mustard and chutney, sprinkled with cayenne, dipped in melted butter, and grilled or broiled at a clear fire.
Two dishes in one entry: a steamed potted liver loaf served cold, and a quick grill of sliced liver under mustard and chutney. The measurements are late-Victorian British and need translating before you start.
- The jar is a bain-marie, not a bakeThe jar sits in a pan of boiling water reaching three-quarters up its side, lid on, for two hours. A 1-litre heatproof pudding basin or a wide-mouth canning jar with the lid rested on loosely works; do not seal it tight, and top up the water as it boils away.
- Half a pint of bread-crumbsAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so about 1¼ cups of fresh crumbs loosely measured — roughly 60-70 g. This is a volume of crumb, not a weight, and it is the binder that turns chopped liver into a sliceable loaf.
- Salt-spoon and the seasoning loadA salt-spoon is about ¼ teaspoon, and the recipe asks for a *small* one, so read cayenne and black pepper as a scant ¼ teaspoon each. The large teaspoonful of salt is on top of already-salty pickled pork; taste the pork first and cut back if it is very salty.
- Pickled porkSalt-cured belly or shoulder, not brined-and-smoked bacon. Unsmoked salt pork or a piece of green (unsmoked) streaky bacon is the closest match; if it is fiercely salty, soak it an hour in cold water and pat dry.
- Chop, do not puréeThe period sense of "chop up" is a hand-chopped mince with visible texture. A food processor pulsed a few times gives the same effect; run it to a paste and the loaf sets close and pasty rather than crumbly.
- DonenessTwo hours in simmering water will take a loaf of this size well past 71°C/160°F, which is where liver and pork should land. Check with a probe through the centre rather than trusting the clock if your jar is unusually deep or wide.
- Cooling and turning outCool it in the jar with a small weight on top — a can on a saucer — so it presses as it sets, then chill overnight before turning out. Cold and firm, it slices thin; warm, it collapses.
- The grilled versionCalf's liver slices about 1 cm thick need two to three minutes a side over a clear fire and no more. Past that the proteins tighten and it goes grainy and dry, which is the usual complaint against liver.
- YieldA pound of liver with the pork and crumbs makes roughly 500 g of potted loaf; cut thin as the recipe directs, it will serve about six as a cold savoury with toast and mustard.
"Devilled" in Victorian cookery means seasoned aggressively with cayenne, mustard and something sharp, and it belonged to the breakfast table, the sideboard and the late supper rather than to dinner proper — a way of making cold or plain meat lively. It sits among the potted and jarred meats that were the household's answer to keeping cooked meat usable for several days before mechanical refrigeration: pressed tight in a covered jar, it kept in a cool larder. The steaming-in-a-jar technique is the same one behind potted beef, potted ham and the various "devils" that fill nineteenth-century British books, and the second half of the entry — mustard, chutney, cayenne, melted butter, a clear fire — is the standard devil mixture applied to almost anything, from kidneys to turkey legs. Chutney's presence is a small marker of the period's Anglo-Indian kitchen, by then thoroughly domesticated into British cooking.