No. 1531

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Foie de Veau au Petit Sale

Cut quarter of an inch thick slices of liver, season with pepper and a little salt, dredge over with flour, and fry with some butter in a pan. When the liver is cooked, dress, pour over the butter and garnish with very thin slices of broiled bacon.

← No. 1530 Calf's Liver a la Clermont Veal No. 1532 Calf's Liver. Italian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A three-line recipe that depends almost entirely on heat control and timing. Ranhofer assumes you know that liver is ruined by a minute too long in the pan.

The hinge: do not overcookQuarter-inch slices need roughly 60-90 seconds a side over fairly high heat, until the outside is browned and the centre still faintly rosy. Cooked through, calf's liver turns grainy and bitter, which is what put generations off it.
"Au petit sale"Petit sale means lightly salted pork; in the French kitchen it meant lightly salted belly or shoulder, closer to unsmoked pancetta or green bacon than to modern sweet-cured smoked streaky. Any thin-cut bacon works; unsmoked keeps the balance Ranhofer intended.
Season lightly with saltThe "little salt" is deliberate. The bacon garnish brings most of the salt to the plate, and liver draws moisture when salted early, which interferes with browning. Salt just before the flour goes on.
DredgingFlour the slices immediately before they hit the pan and shake off the excess. Floured liver left to sit turns gummy and will not take colour.
Butter alone will darkenWhole butter at the heat needed for liver browns fast. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, gives you the same finish with more margin. The pan butter is then poured over as the sauce, so it should be nutty, not black.
"Broiled bacon"Very thin slices, grilled or oven-cooked, then laid over the liver as garnish rather than served as a slab alongside.
SourcingCalf's liver is milder and finer-grained than beef liver and is not an equal substitute for it. Ask a butcher for it sliced to a consistent quarter inch; uneven slices cook unevenly and there is no room for error.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Reckon 5-6 oz of liver per person as a main course, with two or three rashers apiece.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The book is usually said to run to some three thousand-odd numbered recipes, and short entries like this one are essentially working notes for a professional brigade rather than instructions for a home cook, which is why the method is so brief and gives neither quantities nor times. Liver and bacon in some form is common to a great many European kitchens, and the pairing has an obvious logic: liver is lean and gives off almost no fat, while the pork supplies both fat and salt. Ranhofer files it under its French name because Delmonico's menus were printed in French, with English alongside, and his numbering places it among several liver preparations in a row "a la Clermont," Italian style, and so on, each a small variation on the same quick fry.