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Chicken Livers for Garnish
Blanch the livers of four chickens in boiling water for ten minutes, and put them in a saucepan with a little gravy, adding a saltspoonful each of salt and pepper, a bunch of thyme, a little parsley and a wineglassful of white wine. Place the pan over a good fire, cook for fifteen minutes, drain them, and they are ready for use.
A component recipe rather than a dish: firm, seasoned livers meant to be sliced or diced into a garnish, spooned over a sauté, or folded into a stuffing or ragout. Read the long cooking as deliberate — it is what makes the livers hold their shape under a knife.
- YieldThe livers of four chickens is roughly 8 oz (225 g) — about eight lobes. That is enough garnish for four to six plates, not a dish in itself.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So a scant 1/4 tsp each of salt and pepper for the whole batch, which is light; taste at the end and correct.
- WineglassfulIn American cookbooks of this period a wineglass is usually reckoned at 2 fl oz (1/4 cup), though the term drifted as high as 4 fl oz. Two ounces is the safer reading here, since the livers are meant to braise close and drain dry.
- "A little gravy"Not thickened pan gravy in the modern sense but jus or brown stock — enough to come partway up the livers, perhaps 1/2 cup. A good unsalted chicken or veal stock does the job.
- Texture, and why the times are longTen minutes' blanching plus fifteen minutes' simmering would ruin livers served on their own; they go grainy and chalky. That firmness is the point when they are to be cut into neat dice or slices for a garnish. If you want the livers themselves to eat, sauté them three to four minutes to a rosy centre instead and treat this recipe as a period record.
- "A good fire"Medium-high heat on a modern burner, but keep the liquid at a bare simmer once it comes up. A hard boil will toughen the livers further and reduce the small amount of wine to bitterness.
- Preparation the recipe assumesTrim away the connective tissue between the lobes and any green-tinged spot from the gall bladder, which is intensely bitter. Rinse and pat dry before blanching.
- The braising liquidDo not discard it. Strained and reduced, it carries the thyme, parsley and wine and makes an obvious moistener for whatever the livers are garnishing.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 book is organised the way a professional kitchen thinks: a section of building blocks — forcemeats, glazes, garnishes — that get assembled into the named dishes elsewhere in the volume. Chicken livers were a staple of that vocabulary, appearing in croustades, in stuffings and on toast points alongside roast game birds. The method is straightforwardly French: blanch to firm and clean, then braise briefly in stock and white wine with thyme and parsley, drain, and hold. Recipes of this kind rarely say what the finished item is for.