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Calf's Liver En Casserole
One calf's liver
3 cups potato balls
6 slices bacon
1 pint brown stock
1 cup button mushrooms
Wash a calf's liver thoroughly and wipe dry. Fry some bacon in a pan, remove, place the liver in the bacon fat, and sear each side thoroughly. Transfer to a casserole, add slices of bacon, brown stock, and sautéd mushrooms. Cook for one hour and a half, adding more stock if necessary. Just before serving add potato balls which have been fried in deep fat and drained.
A straightforward braise, but the timing belongs to an era when liver was cooked hard. The instructions assume a covered earthenware or metal casserole set in a moderate oven.
- The hinge: cooking timeAn hour and a half will turn calf's liver grainy and dry. A whole lobe seared and braised needs perhaps 30-40 minutes at a gentle simmer, and thick slices considerably less; the liver should stay faintly rosy at the centre.
- CasseroleIn this period the word ordinarily means the covered pot itself, a lidded earthenware or enamelled vessel, rather than a baked dish of layered food, though the food sense was beginning to appear. A Dutch oven is the nearest equivalent.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, and the recipe does not in fact specify oven or stovetop; it says only to cook the casserole for an hour and a half. For liver, a gentle oven or a bare stovetop simmer is the safer reading.
- A pint of brown stockTwo cups of a well-reduced veal or beef stock. Period brown stock was gelatinous from roasted bones and thickened the braise on its own; a commercial carton will not, so reduce it or finish with a little beurre manié.
- Potato ballsScooped from raw potatoes with a melon baller, deep fried until golden. They are added at the last moment precisely so they stay crisp, and they will soften within minutes of hitting the sauce.
- Button mushroomsSauteed separately before going in, as the recipe specifies. Small cultivated white mushrooms are the intended article and remain widely available.
- Calf's liverOrder ahead from a butcher. A whole one runs roughly 3 to 5 lb; buy a 1.5 to 2 lb piece for four to six people and scale the stock down accordingly.
- PreparationPeel off the thin outer membrane and cut out the larger tubes before searing, or the liver will curl and the slices will be stringy.
Casserole cookery was a fashionable department of American domestic writing in the first decades of the twentieth century, often recommended as economical and needing little watching. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, also published recipe collections. Calf's liver held a status that beef liver never did, being milder and paler, and it appears through hotel and household cookery of the period in preparations built on bacon fat, brown stock and mushrooms. Fried potato balls of this kind were a familiar restaurant garnish that home cooks borrowed to give a plain braise a dressed-up finish.