Calf's Liver à la Celeste Smith
Celeste Smith, Mme. Eustis Mère's Cook
Cut a few slices of very tender veal into pieces three inches long and half an inch thick. Fry them in lard with a little onion chopped very fine. Add half a cupful of bouillon or sauce. Let them simmer half or three quarters of an hour. Add parsley well chopped. Boil a handful of best Italian macaroni. Put it in the bottom of a long dish. Pour your livers and sauce on top. Trim with slices of lemon. Old Céleste would say "it was a very vulgar dish, but a delicious one."
A homely, hearty dish of tender meat simmered in sauce and heaped over macaroni — served, as its cook cheerfully admitted, without pretension.
- Liver or veal? The recipe waversThe title says calf’s liver, the body says veal, then “pour your livers on top.” Cook whichever you like — calf’s liver for the titular dish, veal for a milder one; the method is the same.
- Don’t overcook the liverIf you use calf’s liver, keep it pink and just-set. Long simmering turns liver grainy and gray, so add it toward the end rather than stewing it hard.
- “Half a cupful of bouillon”About 4 fl oz of broth to build the sauce.
- A bed of macaroniBoil the pasta, lay it in the dish, and spoon the meat and sauce over — an early, comforting version of meat over noodles.
- Trim with lemonThe lemon slices aren’t just decoration; a squeeze cuts the richness of the meat beautifully.
This recipe survives with a rare gift — the voice of its cook. Celeste, who ran Madame Eustis’s kitchen, called her own creation “a very vulgar dish, but a delicious one,” and that wry honesty is worth more than any pedigree. Community cookbooks like this one preserved not only the recipes of household cooks but occasionally their personalities, a small window onto the skilled women, many of them Black, who did the real work of the New Orleans kitchen. The pairing of rich meat and sauce with plain boiled macaroni is exactly the kind of satisfying, unfussy cooking that fed families day in and day out.
From page 35 of the 1904 edition.
Original page from the book
