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Pork, with Liver
Slice two pounds of pig's liver, not thinner than half an inch. Boil two pounds of belly of pork slightly salted and slice it also. Put the liver into a pint of gravy, or stock; add a grated carrot, and a good-sized onion sliced and fried brown, with a sprinkling of sage and pepper. Cook gently for an hour and a half, then thicken with brown flour; add the sliced pork, and some more gravy to cover the whole; boil up, and serve with a border of puree of split peas round the dish.
A plain Victorian braise of liver and boiled pork belly, thickened with browned flour and framed by split-pea puree. The one thing to watch is the liver: an hour and a half of stewing suits the pig's liver of 1900 far less well than it suits the pork.
- The liver timingNinety minutes in gravy turns modern pig's liver dry and granular. Half-inch slices are cooked through in 15-20 minutes of gentle simmering; if you want the long-cooked flavour of the original, build the sauce with the carrot and onion first, simmer it for an hour, then add the liver near the end.
- A pint of gravyAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so about 2 1/2 US cups. "Gravy" here means unthickened meat stock, not the finished sauce; a good brown pork or beef stock is the right substitute.
- Brown flourPlain flour toasted dry in a pan or a low oven until it is the colour of weak coffee. It thickens less powerfully than raw flour, so allow roughly 1 1/2 tablespoons per cup of liquid, slaked with a little cold stock before it goes in.
- "Slightly salted" bellyLightly salted pork belly was a familiar commodity in this period, and the recipe assumes it rather than explaining it. Fresh belly works, simmered 45-60 minutes until tender; salt the cooking water, or brine the belly for a few hours in the fridge, rather than attempting a cure.
- Sage and pepperNo quantities are given. A teaspoon of dried sage or a tablespoon of chopped fresh, plus a generous half-teaspoon of black pepper, is a workable starting point. Sage is worked into the stew here rather than used as a garnish.
- The pea borderSplit peas, yellow or green, simmered with an onion until collapsing, then beaten smooth with butter and seasoned. Make it thick enough to hold a piped or spooned wall around the edge of the serving dish; a loose puree simply floods the gravy.
- YieldFour pounds of meat between them serves six to eight as a main course with the pea puree and a green vegetable. It reheats well.
Dishes pairing liver with fat belly pork run through British cookery, and the logic is economic: liver is lean, cheap and highly perishable, while salted belly supplies the fat and the seasoning it lacks. The split-pea puree is the same reasoning applied to the side of the plate, pease pudding and pea soup being among the oldest and cheapest staples of the English kitchen. Browned flour as a thickener, common in nineteenth-century English and French practice alike, was a way of getting colour and a faintly nutty depth into a stew without long roasting.