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Potted Goose's Fat Livers
Chop fine one and a half pounds of goose's fat livers and half a pound of calf's liver, put them in a mortar, pound until quite smooth, and pass them through a fine hair-sieve. Put a quarter of a pound of butter in a stewpan with the pounded livers, and stir over the fire for a few minutes; next mix in two tablespoonfuls of thick cream, a few drops of rosewater, salt to taste, a small quantity of cayenne and stir the mixture over the fire for five minutes longer; then put in a few chopped truffles and one teaspoonful of brandy. Let the mixture stew gently at the side of the fire until very thick, then pack it in small jars, leaving about a third of an inch clear space at the top. When cold, fill the jars up with clarified butter, tie them over with parchment, and keep in a dry place.
This is a potted meat preserve of the old school: barely cooked liver sealed under butter and kept on a shelf. The technique is the problem, and it is not fixable with a thermometer, so the notes below explain the terms and then explain the hazard.
- Why it failsThe finished paste is packed warm into jars, sealed airtight under a layer of clarified butter, and stored at room temperature. That is a low-acid, low-salt, oxygen-free environment held in the danger zone, which is precisely the condition in which Clostridium botulinum produces toxin. Nothing in the recipe acidifies, cures or sterilises the contents, and the toxin leaves no smell or taste to warn you.
- The cooking is nowhere near enoughThe recipe gives a few minutes of stirring, then five minutes more, then gentle stewing for an unstated period, on a mixture stiff enough to insulate itself. Liver is a high-risk organ meat for Campylobacter and Salmonella, and "stew gently at the side of the fire until very thick" gives no assurance the whole mass ever reached a safe temperature. If you want a liver parfait or p u00e2t u00e9, use a current recipe with a stated core temperature and refrigerated shelf life.
- Goose's fat liversFoie gras. Its production and sale are restricted or banned in a number of jurisdictions, so availability varies; duck foie gras is the usual substitute where it is sold at all. Fat liver also renders heavily. The original enriches with butter and cream rather than stock.
- Stewpan and mortarA stewpan is a straight-sided saucepan, not a stewpot. The mortar and hair-sieve step — pounding, then forcing through fine mesh — is what a food processor and a drum sieve or tamis do now, and the sieving is the step that actually produces the silky texture.
- RosewaterA few drops only, and it means true distilled rosewater, a survival of an older English habit of using floral distillates in savoury dishes. Rosewaters vary considerably in strength, so it will overwhelm the dish quickly.
- Clarified butter as a sealThe butter cap excludes mould and slows rancidity, but it does the opposite of what is needed against anaerobic bacteria. Parchment tied over the top is a dust cover, not a hermetic seal.
- QuantityTwo pounds of liver plus butter and cream makes a substantial amount of paste, filling several small jars; the recipe does not say how many or how large. It is written to be sealed and kept, which is the reason the method is out of date.
Potting was the English answer to preservation before reliable refrigeration: cooked meat or fish pounded to a paste, packed tight to exclude air, and capped with fat. By the late nineteenth century the method survived less for keeping than for its own sake, as a cold-buffet and sandwich item on the sideboard. The luxury here is the fattened goose liver, associated in French practice with Strasbourg and P u00e9rigord; the half pound of calf's liver both firms the mixture and stretches an expensive ingredient. The rosewater and cayenne, which look eccentric now, reflect an older English seasoning vocabulary that treated floral distillates as ordinary savoury flavourings rather than confectioners' perfume.