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Broiled Liver
Cut eight medium slices liver, trimmed, cover with boiling water and let stand five minutes. Wipe dry and season with salt and pepper. Roll in flour, sweet oil and fresh bread crumbs. Broil over a moderate fire until thoroughly done. Dish in a circle, alternating with thin slices of brown bread fried in butter. Pour a Bordelaise Sauce in the center. Serves 6 to 8.
A straightforward grill built on a technique most cooks have abandoned: blanching the liver before it ever meets the fire. A few of the terms need translating, and the doneness instruction is the one point where modern practice diverges sharply.
- Which liverThe recipe does not say; breaded, grilled slices would suit calf's or beef liver. Calf's liver is milder and more tender; beef liver is stronger and would benefit most from the soaking step. The recipe specifies medium slices, so cut them thick enough not to dry out over the fire.
- Sweet oilAn old trade term for olive oil, specifically a bland, non-rancid grade rather than a peppery finishing oil. Any neutral oil works here; its job is to glue the crumbs on and help them brown.
- The boiling-water soakFive minutes in boiling water firms the surface, draws out some blood, and mutes the metallic edge older livers can carry. It also makes the slices easier to peel and dry. Dry them very thoroughly or the flour will turn to paste instead of a crust.
- Breading orderFlour, then oil, then crumbs. The oil stands in for the egg wash of a standard breading, so brush or dip evenly and press the crumbs on firmly before the liver goes on the grill.
- A moderate fireOn a charcoal grill, coals raked to a medium bed you can hold a hand over for about four seconds; under a modern broiler, the second rack position rather than the top. Too fierce a heat scorches the crumbs before the center is set.
- "Thoroughly done" is the sticking pointLiver cooked until uniformly grey and firm turns dry and grainy, and many modern cooks stop while the centre is still faintly rosy. That is a departure from the recipe, which asks for thoroughly done. Judge by feel: it should be springy, not stiff.
- Bordelaise sauceA red-wine reduction with shallot and brown stock, finished with butter; the classic version also carries poached marrow. Prepare it before the liver goes on, since the grilling takes only minutes and the sauce will not wait comfortably in the center of a hot platter.
- Brown breadProbably an ordinary dark wheat or rye loaf rather than the steamed molasses-and-cornmeal Boston brown bread, though the recipe does not say. Cut thin, fry in butter to a firm crisp, and drain briefly so the slices do not slump against the liver.
- ServingSix to eight, as stated; eight slices works out to roughly one apiece. Warm the platter; breaded liver and fried bread both go leathery fast on a cold one.
Liver could be dressed up by exactly this kind of treatment: trimmed, blanched, crumbed, and served with a French sauce rather than plainly fried. Blanching appears in cookery of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when livers arrived whole and variable rather than pre-sliced, and a cook wanted a way to tame strong specimens. Bordelaise takes its name from Bordeaux and belongs to the red-wine sauces of the classic French repertoire; pairing it with liver here lends the dish something of the standing of a grilled steak. The ring of butter-fried bread around a pool of sauce is a plating arrangement found in period cookery, giving a plain grill some presence on the platter and catching the sauce at the table.