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Sheep's Liver, Fried
Soak the liver, and cut it into slices the third of an inch thick. Dry each slice thoroughly with a soft cloth, flour it well, and sprinkle pepper and salt with a little chopped parsley over it. Heat a little dripping in the frying-pan, put in the liver, and fry it very gently till tender. Turn it occasionally, that it may be equally cooked. When done enough, lift it upon a hot dish, and pour off the fat from the frying-pan. Mix a table-spoonful of flour smoothly with a little cold water, add half a pint of boiling stock or water, and pour the mixture into the pan. Stir briskly till it boils, and add a little browning, a spoonful of store sauce, and a little pepper and salt. Let it boil a minute or two, then strain it over the liver in the dish. Serve very hot. If liked, a large onion may be sliced and fried with the liver and laid upon it in the dish. Time, about half an hour. Probable cost of liver, 9d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound of liver for two or three persons.
A plain fried-liver-and-gravy supper of the sort that filled English cookbooks when offal was the cheapest meat in the shop. The one thing to distrust is the timing.
- Ignore "till tender"Liver does not become tender with long cooking; it firms up and turns granular. Slices a third of an inch thick need roughly 1 to 2 minutes a side over a medium-high heat, until beads of pink juice rise on the surface and the interior is still faintly rosy. The "about half an hour" in the original most likely covers the frying and the making of the gravy together, though the recipe does not say.
- Sheep's liverThe nearest thing on sale today is lamb's liver, from a younger animal and milder than the mature sheep's liver meant here; it is milder and finer-grained than ox liver, sturdier than calf's. Ask the butcher to slice it evenly, since ragged thick-and-thin slices cook unequally.
- The soakWater works, but milk is better; 30 minutes draws out blood and softens the metallic edge. Drain and dry very thoroughly, as the recipe insists, or the flour will turn to paste and the slices will steam rather than brown.
- DrippingBeef dripping gives the correct savoury note. Lard, bacon fat, or a mix of oil and butter all serve. Use enough to film the pan generously rather than to deep-fry.
- "A little browning"Gravy browning: a dark caramel colouring sold in bottles, still available as a burnt-sugar gravy browning or Parisian essence. It adds colour and a trace of bitterness, nothing more, and can be left out.
- "Store sauce"A catch-all for a keeping sauce kept bottled in the store cupboard, home-made as often as bought. Worcestershire sauce, mushroom ketchup or a commercial brown sauce all fit the intent; use a teaspoon or two and taste before adding salt.
- Half a pintImperial measure, so 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. With a tablespoon of flour that yields a thin pouring gravy rather than a coating one.
- OnionsIf you take the optional onion, fry it first in the same fat until soft and browned, lift it out, then cook the liver. Cooked alongside, the onion either burns or holds the liver off the pan.
- YieldOne pound feeds two or three, as stated. Serve with mashed potato and something sharp; the gravy is the whole sauce.
Fried liver and onions is old, cheap and near-universal in nineteenth-century British cookery, and its treatment in Cassell's marks it as a lesson rather than a treat: how to flour, how to fry gently, how to deglaze a pan into a gravy with flour, stock and a spoonful of whatever bottled sauce is on the shelf. The costing of ninepence a pound is the point of the entry as much as the method. Offal was priced far below muscle meat, and a dish that fed three people on a pound of liver belonged squarely to the household economy the book was written for. "Store sauce" and "browning" both testify to a kitchen that had begun to lean on factory-bottled flavourings: Worcestershire sauce had been commercially made since the 1830s, and mushroom ketchup and caramel browning were staples of the Victorian larder, doing the work that long-simmered stocks did in grander kitchens.