Stewed Liver
Prepare liver as for broiling; cut in small pieces and sauté about two minutes in hot fat. Put the pieces in a saucepan with a little water, half a lemon sliced, a pinch each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and stew gently for twenty minutes. Thicken the juice a little and serve.
A short, old-fashioned braise that assumes you already know how liver is dressed for the pan. Two things need attention: what "prepare as for broiling" meant, and the twenty-minute stew.
- Prepare as for broilingPeel off the outer membrane, cut out any tough tubes, and slice about half an inch thick before cutting into pieces. Some period cookbooks also direct soaking liver in milk or salted water for half an hour to draw out blood; it softens the mineral edge.
- Which liverThe book does not say, and the choice changes the dish. Calf's liver is mild and tender; beef liver is stronger and coarser and is the more likely intent in an economy recipe. Lamb or pork liver will work but reads much stronger against the sweet spices.
- The twenty minutesThis is the hinge. Liver stiffens and turns grainy once it passes about 160F, and small sautéed pieces will get there in a few minutes. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble, well below a simmer, and check at eight to ten minutes; twenty is safe for the pot but hard on the meat.
- "A little water"Enough to come partway up the pieces, roughly half a cup for a pound of liver. Stock gives a better sauce than water and costs nothing extra if you have it.
- The lemonHalf a lemon sliced with the peel on will turn bitter over a long stew. Either take the slices out after a few minutes or use juice and a strip of zest instead.
- SpicesA pinch means a pinch. Cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves are there to cut the iron taste of the liver, not to sweeten it; err low, especially with cloves.
- ThickeningLift out the liver, then whisk in a teaspoon of flour kneaded with an equal amount of butter, or a slurry of flour and cold water, and boil the sauce a minute to lose the raw taste. Return the liver only to warm through.
- YieldA pound of liver prepared this way serves three, four if it is one dish among several. Mashed potato, rice or plain buttered noodles take the spiced gravy well.
Liver was the cheapest and most perishable part of a carcass, sold and cooked the same day, and it commonly appears in early twentieth-century American household manuals under the heading of economy meats. What dates this particular version is the spicing: cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves with meat is a survival of a much older European habit, common through the medieval and early modern kitchen and still lingering in nineteenth-century recipes for liver, kidney and other organ meats, where the sweet spices and an acid such as lemon or vinegar were used to blunt a strong, faintly metallic flavor. By the mid twentieth century the same cut would more often be floured and fried with bacon and onion, the spices gone.