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Calf's Liver and Bacon
Slice the liver thin and parboil five minutes in slightly salted water. Dry the slices, dust with pepper, and dredge lightly with flour. Cook thin slices of breakfast bacon until crisp. Remove to a hot dish, and fry the liver in the bacon fat until nicely browned on both sides. Lay the slices on a hot platter and garnish with the crisp bacon. If carefully cooked, the fat in the pan will not be burned, and a nice gravy may be made by putting a teaspoonful of flour in the fat, stirring it until smooth. Then pour in gradually a half cupful of hot milk. Let it boil up, stirring constantly; season with salt and pepper, and pour over the liver.
A straightforward pan dish whose one outdated step is the first one. Everything after the parboiling still works.
- Skip the parboil, or accept the consequenceFive minutes in salted water was likely intended to firm the slices and draw out blood. With good calf's liver it only leaches flavor and starts the proteins tightening before they hit the pan. If you do parboil, dry the slices very thoroughly or the flour will turn to paste.
- The hinge: cook it fast and brieflyThin slices of calf's liver need roughly 1 to 2 minutes per side in hot fat and should stay faintly rosy at the center. Held longer they go grainy and metallic, which is the whole reason liver has a bad reputation.
- Thickness"Thin" here means about 1/4 to 3/8 inch. Ask the butcher to slice it; supermarket liver is often cut thicker, which makes the quick, hard sear impossible.
- Breakfast baconThin-sliced streaky bacon, generally cut thinner than bacon sold as slab. The recipe gives no quantities; six to eight rashers will render enough fat for about a pound of liver, and if your bacon is lean, add a little butter or oil.
- Milk gravy proportionsOne teaspoon of flour to half a cup of milk gives a very thin pan sauce, closer to a gravy poured over than one that coats. For a spoonable sauce use a tablespoon of flour to the same half cup, and let it cook a minute before the milk goes in so it does not taste raw.
- Do not let the fat scorchThe recipe's warning is real: floured liver sheds starch into the fat, and once those bits blacken the gravy is bitter. Pull the pan off the heat between batches and wipe it out if the fond goes past deep brown.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; about 1 to 1 1/4 lb of liver will serve four as a main course. Serve immediately, as liver is unpleasant lukewarm.