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Calf's Liver Quenelles
Steep a thick layer of bread in milk until well soaked, then squeeze, mix it with half a pound of finely-minced calf's liver, and season with parsley, chives and lemon peel, in small quantities and all finely chopped; dust in salt and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour, and bind the mixture with beaten eggs. Divide it with a tablespoon into small quantities, mould them into an oval shape. Plunge the balls into a saucepan of boiling water and boil for half an hour. Chop some bacon, place it in a fryingpan with a lump of butter and fry it until brown. When the quenelles are cooked pour the hot bacon and fat over them, and serve.
A German-style liver dumpling under a French name, with the vague quantities typical of a chef writing for other cooks. Two things need attention: the poaching liquid and the poaching time.
- Never let it boilA rolling boil tears quenelles apart and squeezes them tough. Bring the water to a boil, then drop it to a bare shiver — 175–180F, the surface barely moving — before the dumplings go in.
- Half an hour is far too longA tablespoon-sized quenelle is cooked through in 10 to 15 minutes at a gentle poach; it will float well before that. Thirty minutes of boiling gives you grey, grainy liver. Poach one alone as a test: if it holds together and slices clean, do the rest.
- "A thick layer of bread"This is the panade, and the proportion matters more than the phrase suggests. For half a pound of liver, figure 2 to 3 slices of stale white bread, crusts off, soaked in milk and wrung out hard — the squeezing is what keeps the mixture from going soupy.
- Beaten eggsNo number is given. One egg will bind this quantity; a second only if the mix looks loose after the flour goes in. Chill the mixture 30 minutes before shaping and it will hold far better.
- The liverCalf's liver is still sold, though you may need a butcher. Trim the membrane and any tubes, then pulse in a food processor rather than mincing by hand — but only to a coarse paste, not a purée, or the texture goes pasty.
- Lemon peelZest only, no white pith, and finely grated rather than chopped. Liver takes acid and aromatics well but the quantities here are deliberately small; a teaspoon of zest for the batch is plenty.
- The baconBacon of this period was often dry-cured and may well have been fattier and more heavily salted than modern supermarket rashers. Use a slab or thick-cut bacon, diced small, rendered until brown, and taste the fat before pouring it over — you may want less salt in the quenelle mixture than the recipe implies.
- YieldHalf a pound of liver plus the panade makes roughly 12 to 16 tablespoon quenelles, enough for four as a first course or two or three as a main with potatoes and something sharp — pickled cabbage, or a green salad.
Under its French name this is essentially Leberknödel, the liver dumpling of southern German, Austrian and Bohemian kitchens, where it is usually poached in broth and served floating in clear soup. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's legendary maître d'hôtel, was Swiss-born and came up through a European hotel tradition in which the French vocabulary of the brigade was laid over dishes of every regional origin — so a bread-bound liver dumpling arrives on the page as a quenelle. The technique itself is the classic one: a milk-soaked bread panade, minced meat, egg to bind, moulded into an oval. Serving them dressed with browned bacon and its fat rather than in soup reads as a country rather than a dining-room treatment.