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Calf's Liver Broiled
Cut the liver in thin slices, wash it and let it stand in salt and water half an hour to draw out the blood. Parboil in fresh salt and water, and broil, basting frequently in butter. Lay on a hot dish with a lump of butter.--Mrs.
A four-line nineteenth-century method that hides one serious problem: liver that is parboiled and then broiled will be grey and grainy. Everything else here is sound.
- Skip the parboilingThe single instruction worth overturning. Calf's liver sets and toughens fast; boiling it before it ever meets the fire drives out moisture and leaves a dry, livery slice. Season the raw slices and cook them once, over high heat, until the outside is browned and the centre still faintly rosy.
- Slice thicknessThe recipe says only "thin slices" and gives no measurement. A quarter to a third of an inch suits fast cooking: anything thinner curls and overcooks before it colours; anything much thicker needs gentler heat.
- The soakThe recipe calls for half an hour in salt and water to draw out the blood, a step that turns up in other recipes of the period. It does soften the flavour, though modern milk-fed calf's liver is mild enough that the step can be omitted. Pat the slices completely dry afterwards or they will steam rather than sear.
- What "broil" meantA gridiron over live coals, not an overhead element. A very hot cast-iron pan or a grill gives the same fast, dry, direct heat; a domestic broiler set as high as it goes, with the rack close, is the nearest equivalent indoors.
- TimingRoughly one to two minutes a side for quarter-inch slices. Liver goes from pink to chalky in under a minute, so pull it while it still gives slightly when pressed.
- Basting butterButter dripping onto coals burns and smokes. If you are basting, use clarified butter, or finish the slices in a pan with butter, letting it foam and brown over the last thirty seconds.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity; allow roughly 1 1/2 lb of liver for four as a modern guide. Onions cooked slowly in butter, with a splash of vinegar or wine in the pan, suit the dish, though this recipe does not mention them.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, is full of these terse signed fragments -- household shorthand rather than instruction for beginners. Calf's liver was the choicest of the livers: paler, milder and more tender than beef or pork liver, and dependent on veal being butchered nearby, which in practice meant town markets and well-provisioned farms. Parboiling meat before finishing it by another method turns up in a number of nineteenth-century recipes; the reasons often suggested for it -- uncertainty about doneness over an open fire, and a dislike of blood in the meat, which the salt-water soak also addresses -- are plausible but not documented here.