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Calf's Liver a la Bourgeoise
Take a calf's liver, lard it with fat bacon, braise it with the bourgeoise garnish--carrots and turnips. After it is cooked and dished, stir some demi-glaze into the sauce, pour it on to the meat and garnish with potatoes chateau.
Veal with Mushrooms, or the Calf in Paradise Take some slices of loin of veal, fry them in butter, with pepper and salt, for twenty minutes. Take two spoonfuls of demi-glaze and heat it with some mushrooms and a little madeira. Put the mushrooms and sauce on each slice and sprinkle chopped parsley over all. This can also be done with fines herbes, mushrooms, chervil and parsley, chopped before cooking them in the butter.
Two brief restaurant-shorthand recipes written for cooks who already knew the classical French system. The gaps are in what is assumed rather than what is stated.
- The hinge: do not overcook the liverA whole braised calf's liver wants to come out at about 145-150F internal, still faintly rosy at the centre. Held longer it turns grainy and dry, and no amount of demi-glace will disguise it. The original gives no time or temperature; braise it gently, covered, and check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fatback or unsmoked fat bacon through the meat with a larding needle, because calf's liver has almost no internal fat. Without a needle, wrap the liver in a sheet of thinly sliced fatback or caul fat and tie it; the effect on a braise is much the same.
- "Braise it with the bourgeoise garnish"Brown the larded liver in fat, add the carrots and turnips cut to even batons or turned ovals, moisten a third of the way up with stock and white wine, cover and cook gently. The classical bourgeoise garnish also takes a little onion and diced bacon, though this recipe names only the two roots. The vegetables cook in the same pot and are served round the meat.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock enriched with a brown roux, and by 1915 a familiar item in professional kitchens. A good jarred demi-glace works, or reduce a quart of dark veal or beef stock to a scant cup. Do not substitute a stock cube; the dish is nothing but sauce and meat.
- Potatoes chateauPommes château are potatoes trimmed to smooth ovals about two inches long and cooked slowly in butter until golden and tender through, roughly 25 minutes.
- Twenty minutes for the veal is too longSlices from the loin, cut half an inch thick, need three or four minutes a side in hot butter and should be taken off at about 145F. The twenty minutes in the original suits much thicker cuts or a far gentler pan than most people use now.
- Madeira and the mushroomsUse a dry or medium-dry Sercial or Verdelho rather than a sweet cooking madeira. Sauté the mushrooms separately in butter until their water has driven off before they meet the sauce, or the demi-glace will thin and go grey.
- YieldA calf's liver runs 3-4 lb and will serve six to eight. The veal, allowing two slices a head, serves four from about 1.5 lb of loin.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief funds. That origin explains the register of these two entries, in which the kitchen language is straightforwardly French. À la bourgeoise is a classical garnish name meaning, roughly, household-style: glazed carrots and turnips, small onions and lardons, cooked with the meat rather than fussed over separately. The cheerful alternative title le veau au paradis is the kind of kitchen nickname that travelled by word of mouth and rarely got written down; its origin is not documented, and the book offers no explanation of it either.