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Savory Sandwiches (Well-seasoned chicken stock)
well-seasoned chicken stock and let simmer until tender. Mash the livers fine with a wooden spoon and press them through a sieve; season with salt, paprica, mustard, or a dash of curry powder. Press into a cup, pour melted butter over the top, and set away in a cool place. When ready to serve, remove the butter and prepare the sandwiches after the usual manner.
The page begins mid-sentence: the missing opening line called for chicken livers, which are put into the seasoned stock. What survives is a potted liver spread sealed under butter, meant to be sliced or spread cold onto bread.
- The missing first lineThe fragment has lost the opening step, which would have called for livers (chicken, to match the stock) put into enough well-seasoned stock to cover. No quantity survives; about 1/2 lb is a reasonable modern working amount, and trim any green-tinged spots and connective tissue.
- How long is "until tender"Livers take roughly 6 to 10 minutes at a bare simmer. Cook them through: no pink at the centre, 165F throughout. Held much longer they turn grainy and chalky and the spread loses its silk.
- Sieve or processorThe wooden spoon and sieve give a very fine texture and are worth the trouble for a smooth potted spread. A food processor works, but pulse rather than run it, and add a spoonful of the cooking stock to loosen the paste.
- PapricaThe book's spelling of paprika. In American cookbooks of this period paprika generally meant the sweet Hungarian type, not smoked Spanish pimenton, which will taste anachronistic here.
- The butter sealUse clarified butter, poured warm to a depth of about 1/4 inch over a level, tightly packed surface. Milk solids in whole butter are what spoil first and will break the seal's usefulness.
- "A cool place" means the refrigeratorThe butter cap was the period's substitute for refrigeration in a larder or cellar. Treat this as a cooked, low-acid meat paste: refrigerate it and use it within three days, and do not leave it standing at room temperature.
- Seasoning to taste, before it setsSeason the warm purée aggressively and taste it then. Cold fat mutes salt and spice considerably, so a paste that is correct while warm will read flat straight from the refrigerator.
- Yield and assemblyHalf a pound of livers makes roughly a cup of spread, enough for eight to ten thin sandwiches. "The usual manner" is left to the reader; by the conventions of the period it would mean thin white bread, crusts trimmed, lightly buttered, cut into fingers or triangles.
Sealing a cooked, sieved meat paste in a pot under a layer of butter is one of the oldest preserving tricks in English cookery, of a piece with potted beef and potted shrimp; the fat excludes air and the paste keeps for a while in a cold larder. By the time this book was written the technique appears to have been as much about convenience as preservation: a cook could pot livers a day ahead and have sandwich filling ready for afternoon tea, a card party or a picnic basket. Chicken livers were also thrift, the byproduct of a bird bought whole and drawn at home. Sandwich chapters of this period lean heavily on such savory pastes, since the fashion was for small, thin, crustless sandwiches whose filling had to spread rather than sit in slices.