Cut from a fine calf's liver three-eighths of an inch thick slices; season them with salt and pepper, and roll in flour, then fry in butter, keeping them rare; it will take about four minutes for each side. Add to the butter some shallots, mushrooms, chives, parsley, and chervil all finely chopped; dress the liver, pour over the chopped preparation and finish with the juice of a lemon.
A four-line sauté that depends almost entirely on the thickness of the slice and the heat of the pan. Ranhofer's timing assumes a heavy pan and liver cut to a precise 3/8 inch.
The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is essentially a French professional kitchen's repertoire written down in English for an American readership — hence the doubled titles, Foie de Veau Saute aux Fines Herbes over the plain English. Fines herbes is a codified French preparation rather than a loose handful of greenery: the classical quartet is parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon, all chopped fine and added late so they scarcely cook. Calf's liver, taken from a young milk-fed animal, was the expensive offal, mild and pale where ox liver was strong and dark, and it appears repeatedly in the veal chapter here — Ranhofer gives an Italian style at No. 1532 immediately before this one. That an à la minute sauté of liver sat in the same book as elaborate dressed pieces says something about how a nineteenth-century à la carte restaurant worked: much of the menu had to be cooked to order.