No. 1532

Calf's Liver. Italian Style

Foie de Veau a l'Italienne

From a fine calf's liver cut six transversal slices, each three-eighths of an inch thick; season with salt and pepper. Melt some clarified butter in a sautoir, and when hot range in the slices of liver to cook rather slowly for five minutes on one side, then turn them over to cook as long on the other-ten minutes in all-lay them on a plate, leaving the butter in the sautoir, and glaze them over. Add to the butter in the sautoir one tablespoonful of chopped shallot and two of onions; fry very slowly, then put in double the same quantity of chopped up mushrooms and let cook until they have exhausted all their moisture; dilute with a little veloute and reduce for a few moments, slowly adding one gill of white wine and three teaspoonfuls of essence of truffles (No. 395); take from the fire, and replace the liver leaving it to heat without boiling. Dress the slices in a circle on a dish, and finish the sauce with a pinch of chopped parsley, and pour the whole over the liver.

← No. 1531 Calf's Liver and Bacon Veal No. 1533 Calf's Liver with Fine Herbs-Fried →

For the Modern Kitchen

A short sauté of liver finished in a duxelles-based sauce. Two things need translating: the equipment and stock names, and the cooking time, which by modern standards is roughly double what these slices want.

The hinge: cook the liver lessTen minutes total for slices three-eighths of an inch thick will leave them grey and grainy. Two to three minutes per side over medium heat, until beads of pink juice rise, is enough; they finish warming in the sauce off the heat, as the recipe rightly instructs.
Never let the sauce boil with the liver in itThe final reheat is deliberately below a simmer. Boiling squeezes the slices, toughens them, and clouds the sauce with liver blood.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, not a saucepan and not a deep casserole. Any wide skillet that holds six slices without crowding works; a crowded pan steams the liver instead of colouring it.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The quantities of aromatics are relative: 1 Tbsp shallot plus 2 Tbsp onion, then about 6 Tbsp chopped mushroom, taking "double the same quantity" as double the combined 3 Tbsp.
VeloutéRanhofer's velouté is a white veal or chicken stock thickened with a pale roux. A few tablespoons of any well-made light stock reduced with a little beurre manié gives the same body; unthickened stock alone will not cling.
Essence of trufflesHis No. 395 is a truffle essence, broadly truffle trimmings cooked down with wine or stock. Bottled truffle juice or a spoonful of the liquid from a tin of truffle peelings is the honest substitute. Most truffle oil is flavoured synthetically rather than with truffle, and will dominate the dish.
"Glaze them over"Brush the rested slices with meat glaze — glace de viande, stock reduced to syrup — to keep them glossy and moist while the sauce is built. Skipping it costs appearance, not flavour.
Dry the mushrooms out properlyCooking the chopped mushrooms until all moisture is gone is what makes this an italienne rather than a watery pan sauce. Expect several minutes of patient stirring after the initial liquid releases.
YieldSix slices, serving three as a main course or six as a first course. Buy the liver in one piece and slice it yourself; pre-cut supermarket liver is usually thinner and will overcook in under a minute a side.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its veal chapter runs through the whole classical repertoire in the order a professional kitchen would file it — liver and bacon, liver Italian style, liver with fine herbs. The name à l'italienne in nineteenth-century French cooking does not mean the dish is Italian; it signals a specific sauce built on finely chopped mushrooms and shallots cooked dry, the mixture known as duxelles — a name generally traced to the seventeenth-century Marquis d'Uxelles and to La Varenne — moistened with wine and a light stock. That naming convention — Italian, Polish, Portuguese sauces invented in Paris kitchens — was a way of indexing flavour combinations rather than crediting a country. Calf's liver appears here as a serious restaurant dish rather than an economy cut, dressed with truffle essence and velouté in the sauce.