Home › Sausages › Calf's Liver and Onions Sauteed
Calf's Liver and Onions Sauteed
Take 1 pound of liver sliced half an inch thick. Pour boiling water over and let it parboil--barely simmer--for five to ten minutes. Pour off the water and dry the slices on a napkin; dust both sides with salt and pepper. Put 2 spoonfuls of butter in a frying-pan, and when hot lay the liver in and cook quickly until both sides are nicely browned. There is just the right degree of heat necessary to cook liver. It must not be cooked until hard and dry or burned, but it needs to be cooked all through. As soon as done remove the liver to a warm platter, to keep hot. Into the pan put another spoonful of butter and a small, finely chopped onion. Let it cook for five or six minutes, stirring until a light-brown color. Add a tablespoonful of lemon juice or wine vinegar, a tablespoonful of tomato catsup or a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce, and a little finely minced parsley. Put a spoonful of this sauce on top of each slice of liver.
Serve around it a border of nicely browned potato balls or cakes, or small rice balls.
A straightforward pan-fry with a quick deglazed sauce. The one thing worth reconsidering is the opening step: liver is at its best cooked briefly and served slightly pink, and the parboil works against that.
- The parboilScalding and simmering the slices for five to ten minutes was presumably meant to firm the liver and draw off strong-tasting blood, but it effectively cooks the meat through before it ever meets the pan. It is usually skipped now; some cooks instead soak the slices in milk for 30 minutes and pat them dry, which is said to mellow the flavour without setting the protein.
- DonenessThe instruction to cook it "all through" reflects an era that distrusted underdone offal. Calf's liver is at its tenderest at a faint rose in the centre, roughly 2 minutes a side for half-inch slices in a hot pan. Past that it turns grainy and metallic, which is what the recipe means by hard and dry.
- "Spoonfuls" of butterUnqualified "spoonful" in books of this period generally means a tablespoon. Two tablespoons of butter for a pound of liver is right; add a little oil to raise the smoke point so the milk solids do not blacken before the meat browns.
- Dry the slicesThis is the hinge of the whole dish. Liver holds a great deal of surface moisture and will steam rather than brown unless it is blotted thoroughly. A dry surface, a hot pan and no crowding are what give the browned crust the sauce depends on.
- Buying the liverCalf's liver is milder and finer-grained than beef liver and in many places has to be ordered from a butcher rather than found in a supermarket. Beef liver can stand in but is stronger and coarser; lamb's liver is often suggested as a nearer match. Ask for it sliced half an inch thick, since thin supermarket slices overcook almost instantly.
- The pan sauceFive or six minutes will soften a small chopped onion but will not truly brown it. Cook it until genuinely golden, then add the acid and the catsup or Worcestershire off the direct heat and scrape up the browned bits. A knob of cold butter swirled in at the end will bind it.
- YieldA pound of liver serves three, or four as part of a larger meal. The potato balls or rice balls suggested as a border are period plating; roast potatoes or a plain pilaf do the same job.
Liver and onions is a long-standing example of thrift cooking that stayed on restaurant menus after it stopped being poverty food. The finish here is worth noticing: butter, a chopped onion cooked to light brown, an acid, and a sharp bottled condiment, built in the same pan and spooned over the meat. That is the structure of a pan sauce, and the choice of lemon juice or vinegar reflects a long-standing rule of thumb that rich offal wants acid against it. Bottled tomato catsup and Worcestershire sauce turn up frequently in American compilations of this period, where they could supply some of the savoury depth a stock-based sauce would otherwise give.