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Baked Calf's Liver, with Stuffing
Wash the liver well in cold, salted water. Make an incision in the thickest part with a long, narrow, sharp knife, enlarging the aperture where the blade enters as little as possible, but moving the point of the knife to and fro to increase the size of the cavity inside. Fill with the following stuffing: One pint of bread crumbs; one tablespoon of butter; one teaspoon of salt; one-fourth of a teaspoon of pepper; one-half a small onion; sage, celery and parsley, if at hand. Chop the onion fine, place it in a bowl, and pour scalding water on it. Let it stand only one-half a minute, then pour the water off; this takes away the very rank taste of onion. Rub the butter well into the crumbs, using the hands; this should be done at least one-half hour before the stuffing is needed, as the flavor will be greatly improved by the butter and crumbs remaining together for a time. Add one teaspoon of each of the herbs, if they are available, and also the onion, salt and pepper; the stuffing is then ready to use. After filling the liver with stuffing, season with salt and pepper, and flour it. Place it in a roasting-pan, adding a little water, and lay strips of fat pork over the liver. Roast for one hour. Baste every twenty minutes, the first time with one-half pint of water in which has been placed a tablespoon of butter, and afterward with the gravy in the pan. When the liver is done, place it on a hot platter, thicken the gravy in the pan the same as for any roast and pour it around and over the liver.
A whole calf's liver, pocketed and stuffed like a small roast. The recipe assumes a butcher's-shop liver of two to three pounds and a coal range whose heat the cook judged by hand, so the two things to settle before starting are the size of the liver and the oven setting.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, and the recipe names no oven setting. A moderate oven, around 350F, suits the method: a roasting-pan with a little water in it and pork fat on top is a gentle, half-braised treatment, not a searing one.
- An hour is too longAn hour may be too long -- A whole calf's liver of 2 to 3 lb is likely to be grey and grainy after a full hour at 350F. Cooks who prefer liver pink in the centre aim for roughly 145F to 150F on an instant-read thermometer taken in the thickest part clear of the stuffing, which for a liver of that size may be reached in 35 to 45 minutes -- a deliberate departure from the hour the recipe specifies.
- Sourcing the liverSupermarkets sell calf's liver sliced. A whole lobe has to be ordered from a butcher, and it will arrive as one or two flat lobes rather than the compact roast the recipe imagines. If the piece is under an inch and a half thick, the knife-pocket method will not work; butterfly it, spread the stuffing and roll and tie it instead.
- A pint of bread crumbsTwo cups, and from the way they are rubbed with butter by hand these are soft fresh crumbs, not dry packaged ones. Dry crumbs will absorb the butter differently and set hard; if that is all you have, moisten them with a little stock.
- Fat porkSliced salt pork or fatback, laid over the meat to baste it as it renders. Unsmoked streaky bacon is the nearest common substitute, though it brings smoke and cure with it. Liver has almost no fat of its own, so do not skip this layer.
- Scalding the onionThe recipe pours scalding water over the chopped onion and drains it after half a minute. The intent is to leach and blunt the pungent sulphur compounds in raw onion without cooking it. Sweating the onion in the tablespoon of butter would do a similar job and tastes better in a stuffing.
- Buttered crumbs, half an hour aheadWorth doing as written. Rubbing butter into the crumbs and letting them stand lets the fat coat each crumb, which keeps the stuffing loose rather than pasty once it takes up the pan juices.
- The gravyThicken the pan liquid with a tablespoon each of flour and fat per cup, or with a slurry. Taste before salting: the salt pork and the teaspoon of salt in the stuffing will have already contributed.
- YieldA 2 to 3 lb liver with stuffing serves six to eight. Slice it across the pocket so each portion carries stuffing.
Treating a whole calf's liver as a small roast rather than frying slices was a way of making an organ meat do the work of a joint. The tone here is characteristic: the technique is explained rather than assumed, from how to work the knife point to why the buttered crumbs should stand. Herbs are offered conditionally, "if at hand" and "if they are available". The strips of fat pork are older than the book, a well-attested way of barding lean meat that would otherwise dry in the oven.