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Turkey, Livers of, Curried
Pound the cooked livers of two turkeys (or three fowls), mix them with a tea-spoonful of mustard, salt and cayenne to taste, a dessert-spoonful of anchovy essence, a tea-spoonful of curry-paste, and a little butter. Work all into a smooth paste, rub it through a sieve, and spread on hot buttered toast. Place it in a very sharp even for a few minutes to get thoroughly hot, and cut it into convenient pieces. Dish up, garnish with parsley, and serve with boiled rice.
A Victorian savoury: a spiced liver paste spread on toast and flashed in a hot oven. The whole thing takes fifteen minutes once the livers are cooked, and the only real skill is in the seasoning.
- Quantity of liversA turkey liver runs to a couple of ounces, so two turkeys' worth is somewhere around 4-6 oz; three fowls' livers will be rather less. Supermarket chicken livers sold in tubs are the practical substitute — about 6 oz.
- Cook the livers firstThe recipe assumes livers already cooked, presumably left from roasting. Poach or sauté them in butter until firm and no longer pink at the centre — poultry liver should reach 165F — then cool before pounding.
- A dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons, midway between the Victorian teaspoon and tablespoon. Anchovy essence in that amount is assertive; taste before adding the salt.
- Anchovy essenceA bottled anchovy-and-vinegar seasoning widely sold in the period. Anchovy paste from a tube, thinned with a few drops of vinegar, is the closest thing now; Worcestershire sauce will do at a pinch but brings tamarind and clove with it.
- Curry-pasteNot a modern Thai curry paste. The nineteenth-century article was a thick oily blend along the lines of turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek and chilli, sold ready-made in bottles. Any mild Madras-style curry paste is the right register.
- Pounding and sievingThe mortar and the hair sieve are there to get a texture with no grain in it. A small food processor does both jobs; if the paste still feels granular, push it through a fine sieve with the back of a ladle.
- A very sharp ovenSharp means hot; treat it as roughly 450F or above, bearing in mind the terms were not standardised. Two or three minutes is enough to heat the paste through, and much longer will dry the toast to a plank. A hot grill, watched, gives the same result faster.
- Yield and servingSix ounces of paste covers four to six slices of toast, enough for four as a savoury course or a light lunch with the boiled rice. Cut into fingers after heating, not before.
This belongs to the savoury, the small hot salty course that came after the sweet at a Victorian dinner and before the dessert fruit — the same slot occupied by devilled kidneys, angels on horseback and Scotch woodcock. Curried livers on toast sit at the meeting point of two Victorian household habits: thrift, since the livers are what is left after the birds have been roasted, and the bottled-condiment trade, since anchovy essence and curry paste were both factory goods a cook bought rather than made. Curry powders and pastes had been sold commercially in Britain since the late eighteenth century, and by the time this recipe was written down they were treated as ordinary store-cupboard seasonings rather than anything exotic — used here, as often in English cookery of the period, less to make an Indian dish than to sharpen a bland one. The instruction to serve boiled rice alongside is the only gesture toward the curry's origins.