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Liver Sauce for Fish
Stew the liver until quite tender in some of the gravy in which the fish was boiled. Mince it finely, and pound it in a mortar with half a tea-spoonful of dry mustard. Thicken half a pint of gravy with a small piece of butter rolled in flour; add the liver, some salt, and a tea-spoonful of chilli vinegar. Let all boil up once, and serve. Time, a quarter of an hour to boil the liver. Sufficient for four or six persons. Probable cost, 3d.
A Victorian sauce built from the liver of the fish itself, served with the boiled fish it came out of. The whole thing hangs on having that liver, which now takes asking a fishmonger in advance.
- Which liverThe recipe assumes the cook has just boiled a large whole fish and kept its liver; it does not name the fish, and cod is the one usually meant by a liver sauce of this kind. It is not calves' or chicken liver. A cod liver is large, pale and very fatty; a fishmonger handling whole fish can sometimes save one, but it must be very fresh, as fish liver spoils faster than the flesh.
- "The gravy in which the fish was boiled"This means the poaching liquid, not meat gravy — salted water or a court bouillon with vinegar, peppercorns and herbs. Strain it before using or the sauce will be gritty and cloudy.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. That yields a generous sauce for four to six, which matches the stated quantity.
- Butter rolled in flourThe same principle as beurre manie: soft butter worked with flour, commonly in equal weights, whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces; about 15 g of each would suit 10 fl oz. The recipe gives no proportions, and "a small piece" leaves it to the cook's judgment.
- Chilli vinegarA once-standard bottled condiment of red chillies steeped in vinegar for a week or two. Closest ready substitute is a sharp pepper vinegar or a teaspoon of white wine vinegar with a scrape of chilli; Tabasco is far hotter and more assertive in flavour.
- PoundingA mortar was the usual tool; a small food processor or a fine sieve does the same job faster. Push the cooked liver through a sieve if you want the smooth, almost creamy texture the pounding was aiming at.
- Cooking timeFifteen minutes for the liver is on the long side. It is very soft and fatty and is done as soon as it is firm and opaque throughout, often in five to eight minutes; longer and it turns grainy. The finished sauce needs only the single boil the recipe specifies.
- A note on richnessCod liver is extremely high in oil and in vitamin A. The sauce is meant to be spooned over fish in small quantity, not eaten by the bowl.
Boiled cod with its own liver worked into the sauce seems to have been familiar enough in nineteenth-century British households, when fish came into the kitchen whole and little was discarded — the roe might be fried or potted, the head and bones go to stock, and the liver, too rich to serve on its own, be pounded into a sauce for the flesh. The same instinct survives in the Norwegian winter dish mølje, where boiled skrei is served with its liver and roe alongside. Cassell's gives the probable cost as threepence, which is arguably the point of the entry: it is a sauce made from a part of the fish already paid for, in a book that priced every dish so a household could budget by it. The chilli vinegar and dry mustard read as correctives for oily fish, sharpening a sauce that would otherwise be flatly fatty.