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Liver Sandwiches
Fry two or three slices bacon till crisp. Chop this with cooked beef liver. Mix with just enough cooked dressing or mayonnaise to moisten well, season and spread it on slices of buttered whole wheat bread. On other side of the sandwich place a lettuce leaf, salt it and lay slice tomato on top. Serve each sandwich open on a plate, with two strips of hot, freshly cooked bacon across the top.
A liver spread built on bacon fat and cooked dressing, served open-faced. The only real technique question is how the liver itself is cooked before it gets chopped.
- Cook the liver just throughBeef liver turns grainy and metallic if taken much past the point where the pink disappears. The recipe does not say how the liver is cooked; slicing it no more than half an inch thick and cooking it quickly is the usual approach. Organ meats should reach 160F at the centre, by which point the pink will be gone.
- "Cooked dressing"This means boiled dressing, the flour-thickened egg-and-vinegar sauce that appeared alongside mayonnaise in American cookbooks of the period. It is tarter and less rich than mayonnaise. Either works here; the tartness of the boiled version cuts liver better.
- Chop, do not pureeHand-chopping on a board, or a few short pulses in a processor, gives the coarse texture the recipe wants. Run it longer and you get liverwurst paste, which will not sit on bread the same way.
- Season with intent"Season" in shorthand of this kind generally means salt and pepper, and a little lemon juice or grated onion keeps liver from tasting flat. Taste the mixture before it goes on the bread.
- Bacon, twiceTwo or three slices go into the spread crisp and chopped; the two strips laid across the top are cooked separately and served hot. Fry all of it at once and hold the topping slices warm rather than reheating them.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities beyond the bacon, so yield is a guess: three slices of bacon and a matching amount of chopped liver will cover two or three open sandwiches.
- Keeping itChopped liver bound with dressing is a low-acid, high-moisture mixture. Refrigerate it immediately and use it within a day; do not leave assembled sandwiches sitting at room temperature.