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Calves Liver and Bacon
Cut liver in one-half inch slices, soak in cold water twenty minutes, drain, dry and roll in barley flour. Have pan very hot. Put in bacon thinly sliced, turn until brown; put on hot platter. Fry liver quickly in the hot fat, turning very often. When done, pour off all but one or two tablespoons fat, dredge in barley flour until it is absorbed, and stir till brown. Add hot water gradually to make smooth gravy, season and boil one minute. Serve separately.
A straightforward pan dish whose success rests almost entirely on how briefly the liver stays in the fat. Everything else is timing and heat management.
- The hinge: cook the liver fastHalf-inch slices of calf's liver need roughly 1 to 2 minutes a side in a hot pan, until the exterior is browned and the center is still faintly pink. Held past that point it turns grainy and livery, and no gravy will rescue it.
- Barley flourA wheat-saving substitute, and it behaves differently: it browns faster, tastes faintly sweet and nutty, and thickens less than wheat flour. All-purpose flour works directly in its place if you want a more familiar gravy; if you use barley, expect a thinner sauce and go a little heavier on it.
- The cold-water soakTwenty minutes in cold water mellows the mineral edge of the liver. Milk is the more common modern soak for the same purpose. Either way, dry the slices thoroughly or the flour will slide off and the pan will steam instead of sear.
- Trim the membraneThe recipe does not mention it. Peel away the thin outer membrane from each slice before flouring, or the liver will curl and buckle in the pan.
- Calf's liver specificallyVeal liver is paler, more tender and much milder than beef liver, and may have to be ordered ahead. Beef liver can stand in but wants the full soak and a very short cooking time.
- "Pan very hot"Medium-high on a modern burner, in cast iron or heavy steel. Render the bacon first, as directed, and use its fat for the liver; if the bacon is lean you may need to add a little more fat before the liver goes in.
- GravyTwo tablespoons of fat and enough flour to absorb it, cooked until nut-brown, then hot water in stages. Boiling one minute is enough to cook out the raw starch taste. Season with salt and plenty of black pepper; stock instead of water improves it considerably.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities; scale to the number at table. "Serve separately" means the gravy goes to the table in a boat rather than over the platter, so the floured crust on the liver stays crisp.
Liver and bacon is old, thrifty cookery: offal was cheap, spoiled quickly, and was traditionally paired with cured pork whose fat both flavored it and supplied the frying medium. The barley flour offers a tentative clue to the date, though such substitutions recur in the Second World War and in dietary cookery as well. Wheat was the grain most easily shipped and stored for armies and allies, and American home-front campaigns during and just after the First World War pressed households toward barley, oat, corn and rye flours in everyday cooking. That may be why a substitute grain appears here without comment or explanation. The dish also reflects the era's confidence in variety meats as ordinary weekday food, an attitude that faded from American kitchens over the following half century.