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Liver Boulettes
Wash 1 pound of either calf's or lamb's liver, place in a saucepan with 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and boiling water to cover, and simmer for three-quarters of an hour; if in slices, twenty minutes will be sufficient. Cool, and put through the food chopper. Scald 1/2 pint of milk in a doubler boiler; rub together to a paste 1 tablespoonful of butter and 2 tablespoonfuls of flour, add to the milk and stir gently until dissolved and the milk mixed to a thick sauce. Cover, and cook for ten minutes; then add salt and pepper to season highly, 1 teaspoonful of onion juice, 1 tablespoonful of chopped parsley and the chopped meat; stir well and set away until cold. Shape into small balls, dip each in egg, roll in fine dry crumbs and fry golden brown in deep, smoking hot fat.
Boiled Ham, Deviled Rub well together 1 teaspoonful of mustard and 1 teaspoonful of olive oil, then add, gradually with much stirring, 1 teaspoonful of lemon juice.
Cut slices from a boiled ham nearly half an inch thick, broil quickly over a clear fire, lay on a hot platter and spread with the mixture.
A croquette in all but name: cooked liver bound in a thick white sauce, chilled firm, then breaded and fried. The page also runs a second, unrelated item — deviled boiled ham — straight on from the first without a break.
- The hinge is the chillingThe bound mixture must be genuinely cold and firm before shaping, or the balls slump and burst in the fat. Several hours in the refrigerator, or overnight, is not too much.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. With a tablespoon of butter and two of flour it makes a thick binding sauce, on the loose side as croquette panades go, and it is what holds the liver together; do not thin it.
- That 45-minute simmerWhole liver held at a simmer for three-quarters of an hour comes out grey and grainy. Since it is going through the chopper and into a sauce, that matters less here than it otherwise would, but a shorter simmer — starting to check a whole piece at around 20 minutes, or the stated 20 for slices — gives a better-tasting result, provided the liver is cooked through.
- Food chopperA hand-cranked meat grinder. A food processor pulsed briefly does the same job; run it too long and you get paste rather than the slightly coarse texture the dish wants.
- Onion juicePeriod cooks grated an onion and pressed out the liquid. Grate half a small onion on a microplane and use the pulp and juice together.
- "Deep, smoking hot fat"Smoking fat is past its useful point. Fry at 350-375F, which browns the crumbs in two to three minutes while the interior only needs heating through.
- Season harder than you think"Season highly" is doing real work here. Liver flattens out when cold and bound in a bland sauce; taste the mixture before chilling and correct it then, not after shaping.
- YieldA pound of liver with a cup of sauce makes roughly 20 walnut-sized balls, enough for four as a main course with a sharp sauce or pickle alongside.
- The deviled hamA separate recipe run on without a heading. The quantities given make only about a tablespoon of paste, enough for a slice or two; scale up by the slice. "Broil quickly over a clear fire" means over coals burning clear, without smoke or flame — a hot grill or a very hot pan will serve; the ham is already cooked and only wants colour.
Boulette is simply French for a small ball, and the technique here — meat cooked, ground, bound in a stiff béchamel, chilled, breaded and fried — is the standard croquette method that filled American cookbooks from the late nineteenth century onward. Its appeal to a low-cost cookery book is obvious: organ meat was among the cheapest protein at the butcher's, and a cup of milk sauce stretches a single pound of it across four plates. The deviled ham that follows works on the same principle from the other direction, using mustard, oil and lemon to dress a few slices of already-boiled ham.