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Braised Calf's Liver
Remove the skin, gall and spleen from a very white calf's liver, lard it with some well-seasoned fillets of ham and fat bacon, the larding to be done in such a way that the fillets do not cross the top surface. Put the liver in a basin with some trimmings of truffles, a bay leaf, a few sprigs of parsley and thyme and a little salt and spices. Let it remain in this for two hours, then warp the liver and seasonings up in a large piece of pig's caul, and tie it securely with tape. Place a good-sized lump of lard in a stewpan, and when boiling put the liver in, fry it for about fifteen minutes, then put the lid on the stewpan with some live embers on the top, move the stewpan to the side of the fire, and braise the liver for one hour, turning it frequently. Peel and scald two dozen small onions and two dozen small carrots, put them in with the liver, the onions on one side and the carrots on the other, sprinkle in a little salt, place the lid on the stewpan again, with a fresh supply of live embers on the top, and finish cooking by the side of a moderate fire for another hour. Remove the liver, drain it, put it in a hot dish, and arrange the vegetables neatly round it. Skim the fat off the cooking liquor, mix with it one wineglassful of white wine and a little gravy, boil quickly till it is reduced one-half, then mix with it a small quantity of brown sauce and stir over the fire a few minutes longer. Sprinkle in a little pepper and salt, strain the sauce, pour it over the liver, and serve. Calf's Liver, Brittany Style Chop fine four or five large-sized onions, put them into a saucepan with a bay leaf and a lump of butter and fry till well browned. Sprinkle a little salt, pepper and flour over the onions, add a pinch of sugar, pour in a half pint of gravy, and boil them gently till cooked. Cut a calf's liver in slices and season with salt and pepper, place them in a fryingpan with a lump of butter, and fry over a quick fire. When the pieces of liver are cooked remove the pan from the fire, pour a small quantity of glaze and lemon juice over and sprinkle in a little chopped parsley; toss them about well until all the slices are covered. Arrange these in a circle on a hot dish, and fill in the center with the chopped onions. Garnish with croutons of fried bread that have been brushed over with a paste-brush dipped in melted glaze, and then serve.
Two preparations sharing a page: a whole braised calf's liver in caul, and a quick sauté in the Breton manner. The first is a period banquet piece and needs the most translation.
- The hinge: temperature, not timeTwo hours of braising suited a large whole liver (a whole calf's liver typically runs 3-4 lb) kept barely at a simmer; taken further, liver turns granular and dry. Check the centre well before the end of the second hour, allowing at least 145-150F and bearing in mind that guidance for offal is usually higher, and rest it before slicing.
- Live embers on the lidCoals heaped on a flat-lidded stewpan set beside the fire gave gentle heat from above as well as below. A heavy Dutch oven with the lid on, in a moderate oven of around 325F, is a reasonable modern approximation, though the book itself specifies no oven temperature; the frequent turning is still worth doing.
- Caul fatPig's caul is the lacy membrane from around the stomach. Order it from a butcher, ask for it fresh or frozen rather than salted, and soak it briefly in tepid water to make it pliable before wrapping. It bastes the meat and then melts away almost entirely.
- LardingThe fillets are batons of ham and fat bacon threaded through the meat with a larding needle so the ends stay buried. Without the needle, cut deep pockets with a thin knife and push the strips in. Modern calf's liver is lean and benefits from this.
- Gall and spleenLiver sold today comes trimmed; there is nothing to remove but the outer membrane, which peels away easily if you start it at a corner with a knife tip. The pale, fine-grained "very white" liver Oscar wanted is milk-fed veal liver.
- Gravy, glaze and brown sauce"Gravy" here means unthickened brown stock, "glaze" is stock reduced to a syrup (meat glace), and "brown sauce" is espagnole or a good demi-glace. A jarred demi-glace concentrate stands in for all three at different strengths.
- WineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is about 2 fl oz, a quarter cup. The half pint of gravy in the Brittany recipe is a US half pint, 8 fl oz.
- Truffle trimmingsPeelings left from turning truffles were a cheap by-product in a hotel kitchen and are not one now. A spoonful of truffle paste, or simply the herbs alone, will do; the marinade is there for perfume, not bulk.
- YieldThe braised liver with its two dozen onions and two dozen carrots will serve roughly eight to ten as a main course. The Brittany version calls for a whole calf's liver, sliced, not the pound or so a modern cook might buy; the slices want to be no thicker than half an inch and the pan genuinely hot.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, and the 1896 book that carries his name is less a home cookbook than a working record of what a large hotel kitchen of the 1890s could put out — several thousand recipes, many of them straight French classics written in English. Braised calf's liver larded and wrapped in caul is one of those: foie de veau braisé as it appears in the French professional repertoire, a cut treated with the same care given to a fricandeau of veal, and served whole with a garnish of turned vegetables. The Brittany version that follows it is the cheaper, faster cousin, liver and browned onions, the sort of thing generally traced to regional French home cooking and dressed up here with glazed croûtons. That both sit on one page says something about the period: American hotel dining still took much of its grammar from Paris, and organ meats were centre-of-the-table food rather than an afterthought.