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Minced Calf's Liver
Chop fine about a pound and a half of calf's liver, a small onion and a quarter of a pound of fat bacon. Place the onion and bacon in a stewpan with a small piece of butter, and stir it over the fire for five minutes. Then in put in the liver and sprinkle over salt and pepper, and any kind of seasoning that may be desired, and stir the whole over the fire for ten or twelve minutes. Turn the mixture onto a dish, leave it until cool, then mix in three well-beaten eggs. Sew a caul into a bag, put the mince into it, and fasten at the end. Melt a good-sized lump of butter in a saucepan, then put it in the bag, place the lid on the saucepan, and steam it for an hour turning occasionally. When cooked take the caul out of the saucepan, and allow it to get cold before serving.
Stewed Calf's Liver, Bourgeoise Place in a saucepan over the fire a small calf's liver thoroughly larded with pieces of larding pork--previously seasoned with a pinch or two of chopped parsley and a clove (crushed) of garlic--with two tablespoonfuls of clarified butter, one sprig of theyme, two bay leaves, half of a sliced carrot, and half of a sliced onion, then turn the liver over and moisten it with one gill of Spanish sauce, and one gill of white broth. Season with a pinch of salt and a little pepper, and cook for forty-five minutes. Strain the sauce into another saucepan, meanwhile keeping the liver in a warm place; add to the gravy two medium-sized, well-scraped, sliced raw carrots, and two or three ounces of salted pork cut into shreds. Stew well together for twenty-five minutes, and pour the garnishing over the liver just prior to serving. Decorate with six or eight small onions placed round the dish.
Two liver dishes run together on one page: a steamed liver forcemeat wrapped in caul, served cold, and a braised whole liver in the bourgeois style. Both assume a butcher's counter rather than a supermarket meat case.
- Caul fatThe lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach, sold as caul fat and available frozen from many butchers. It must be soaked in tepid water, sometimes lightly vinegared, until pliable before it can be sewn or folded; it tears if worked cold and dry. A double layer of caul folded into a parcel and tied does the same job as sewing a bag.
- Steaming in butterThe parcel goes into a covered saucepan with butter and no water, over low heat, and is turned so it does not scorch. This is closer to a slow butter-braise than true steaming, and the pan wants to be barely sizzling for the full hour.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. The second recipe uses one gill each of Spanish sauce and white broth, so half a cup of each.
- Spanish sauce and white brothSpanish sauce is sauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce built on a dark roux and brown stock. White broth is unbrowned veal or chicken stock. A good reduced brown stock or demi-glace substitutes for the espagnole without harming the dish.
- LardingThreading strips of seasoned pork fatback through the meat with a larding needle. Calf's liver is lean and dries in a forty-five minute braise, so this is not decorative. If you have no larding needle, wrapping the liver in thin sheets of fatback or bacon and tying it achieves much the same.
- Doneness, not the clockForty-five minutes for a whole small liver in a covered pan is about right, but liver cooked past medium turns grainy and dry. Cook to about 145F at the centre and hold it warm while the garnish stews.
- Typos in the original"theyme" is thyme, and "then in put in the liver" reads as "then put in the liver." Both are printer's slips rather than technique.
- Yield and servingThe minced liver from a pound and a half would serve roughly six to eight as a cold first course, sliced like a coarse pate; it firms up considerably as it chills, which may be why the recipe has it cooled fully before serving. The braised liver would serve perhaps four to six.
Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen ran on French classical technique, and both of these are hotel versions of thrifty domestic cookery: the minced liver in caul is essentially a *crepinette* or *gayette*, the sort of pork-butcher's parcel found across southern France and, in another register, in the English faggot. "Bourgeoise" in nineteenth-century menu French signals a homely treatment -- in classical practice a garnish of carrots, onions and salt pork much like the one here -- and it appears on period menus as a way to sell a modest cut with a respectable name. Calf's liver was generally the dearer liver in this era, above beef or pork, and it was served in grand rooms without apology; that offal has since retreated from American restaurant menus is one of the clearer shifts between this book's world and ours. The caul itself is a survival of whole-animal butchery, when a cook could expect a membrane, a bladder or a length of intestine to be available as casing.