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Pig's Fry
A pig's fry, which is composed of the heart, liver, lights, and sweetbread, should be used when quite fresh. Wash it well, and simmer it in a little salt and water for half an hour. Dry it, and cut it into slices the third of an inch thick. Dredge these with flour, and season with a little salt, pepper, cayenne, and powdered sage. Fry them in hot fat until they are lightly browned. If liked, a slice of bacon, finely minced, and a chopped onion, may be fried with them. Serve the fry neatly arranged on a hot dish, with a shallot, finely minced, sprinkled over it, or with the following sauce poured round it. Mince two large onions and one large apple, and fry them in melted butter until they are quite soft. Dredge a table-spoonful of flour over them, and add a pinch of cayenne, a large pinch of salt, a tea-spoonful of moist sugar, and a tea-spoonful of made mustard. Pour over these a table-spoonful of vinegar, and stir the sauce over a gentle fire for four minutes. Add two table-spoonfuls of claret, and serve. Time to fry the slices, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 8d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A butcher's-counter dish built from the pluck of a freshly killed pig, seasoned hard and served with a sharp apple-and-onion sauce. Most of the work is in sourcing and in not overcooking the liver.
- What a "fry" isThe heart, liver, lights (lungs) and sweetbread of one pig, sold together as the pluck. Lung cannot legally be sold for human food in the United States, so an American version will be heart, liver and sweetbread only; in the UK and much of Europe lights are still obtainable from a traditional butcher on order.
- SweetbreadIn a pig's pluck this is often the pancreatic ('stomach') sweetbread rather than the thymus, though either may be sold under the name. It is softer and cooks faster than the other cuts, so keep it in separate slices and pull it from the pan first.
- Freshness is not optionalOffal spoils faster than muscle meat, and liver in particular turns metallic within a day or two. Buy it the day you cook it and keep it cold until it goes in the pot.
- The half-hour simmerThis is a par-boil: it firms the liver and lights so they slice cleanly, draws off blood, and leaves the frying stage mostly a matter of browning. Bring to a bare simmer only; a hard boil toughens the heart.
- Twenty minutes is for the heartTwenty minutes is for the pan, not the liver -- The recipe's twenty minutes comes after a half-hour simmer. Liver at a third of an inch needs only two to three minutes a side and goes grey and grainy long before twenty, so cook the cuts in separate batches and reunite them on the dish.
- Ingredient namesMoist sugar is soft light brown sugar. Made mustard is prepared mustard from the jar, not powder. Claret means dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red. Shallot here is raw and finely minced as a garnish, not softened.
- The fatThe recipe says only 'hot fat'; lard or dripping would both be period-appropriate, and any neutral fat with a high smoke point works. Get it properly hot before the floured slices go in or the dredging turns pasty.
- Yield and costServes three or four as written. The '8d. per pound' is Victorian pricing for a cheap cut.
Pig's fry belonged to the killing day. On a smallholding or in a village where a pig was slaughtered in autumn, the pluck could not be salted or hung like the sides and hams, so it was eaten at once — often shared out among neighbours, who would return the favour when their own pig was killed. Cassell's puts it among the plain, cheap dishes precisely because the pluck was the offcut nobody paid much for. The apple-and-onion sauce, sweetened, soured with vinegar and sharpened with mustard and cayenne, does the same job as apple sauce with roast pork, cutting the richness of liver and fried fat. Lungs, standard eating across Europe for centuries and still found in Scottish haggis and Austrian Beuschel, remain obtainable from British butchers, though the American ban on lights is why this particular combination is now hard to reproduce in full there.