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Calf's Liver
Those who are addicted to the eating of liver will appreciate that of the calf above all others. It should be cut into slices a half inch or so thick, and well washed, dried and floured before using. The flesh is close and dry when cooked, and therefore requires some qualifying material to be served with it, such as bacon.
Liver and Bacon in Paper Cases Boil some calf's liver until tender and cut it into slices. Open a sheet of common note paper, and place on one-half of it a nicely trimmed rasher of bacon; have well mixed half an ounce of sifted breadcrumbs, and about one saltspoonful each of pepper, sifted herbs, chopped parsley, salt, and very finely-chopped onion; sprinkle nearly one teaspoonful of this seasoning over the rasher of bacon, lay it on a slice of the liver, sprinkle this also with about a teaspoonful of the seasoning, lay on top another nicely-trimmed thin rasher, fold the other half of the paper over, turn up the edges of the paper at the three open sides, and fry for quarter of an hour, turning once. Serve while it is very hot.
Two things sit side by side here: a general note on handling calf's liver, and a Victorian recipe for cooking it sealed in paper. The paper case is the part that needs translating.
- The hinge: stop boiling the liverBoiling calf's liver until tender and then frying the parcel a further quarter of an hour cooks it twice. The book's remark that the flesh is "close and dry" is a general observation about cooked liver, not a comment on this method. Modern practice is to cook the slices once, briefly, to a rosy centre; the bacon and seasoning then read as flavour rather than as rescue.
- "Common note paper"Use parchment paper, brushed on both sides with oil or melted butter. Modern writing paper is bleached, coated and sometimes printed, and none of it belongs in a hot pan. Foil works but seals more tightly and tends to steam rather than fry.
- Saltspoonful and rasherA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A rasher is simply one slice of bacon, cut thin here so it renders in the time available; streaky (American-style) bacon suits the recipe better than a thick back rasher.
- Half an ounce of breadcrumbsRoughly two tablespoons of fine dry crumbs; with the seasonings that makes about seven teaspoons of mixture, and the recipe uses two teaspoons per parcel, so enough for three or four. "Sifted herbs" appears to mean dried herbs rubbed through a sieve to a powder; thyme and marjoram are plausible choices.
- Frying a paper parcelKeep the pan at a steady medium heat with a shallow film of fat, not a hot one. Folded parchment scorches over high heat and the turn-up-the-edges seal will leak; press the folds firmly and turn only once, with a wide spatula.
- Washing and flouringRinsing liver was standard when it came from a butcher's block and might carry blood or fragments of membrane. Vacuum-packed liver needs only patting dry and peeling off any silverskin; flour it just before it meets the pan or the coating turns pasty.
- YieldOne parcel per person, each holding a single half-inch slice between two thin rashers. The recipe says only to serve it very hot; serving it in the paper and cutting it open at the table is the usual papillote practice.
Cooking in paper — en papillote, a term often traced to the French for a curl or twist of paper, though other derivations are offered — was long a valued kitchen device, since it held in the fat and aroma of strongly flavoured meats and could be sent to the table sealed. Recipes of this kind gather professional method alongside domestic advice, and the pairing of liver with bacon reflects a very old kitchen logic: lean, dry offal was almost always married to something fatty. Calf's liver was the aristocrat of the offal counter then and still commands the highest price, being milder and finer-grained than ox or pig liver; the note that eaters are "addicted" to it is a fair reading of a period when organ meats appeared on hotel menus without apology.