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Calf's Liver-Marine
Mrs. J. M. Ayer.
Lard the liver; add pepper and salt sufficient to season it, then roll and tie it; cut two onions in thin slices and lay in the bottom of an earthen crock; add two slices of salt pork cut thin, lay the liver on that; add more pepper and salt, a little vinegar and salad oil, and set in a cool place for twenty-four hours. Cook over a slow fire from half-past two until six; a wine-glass of claret added at half-past four is excellent. This is arranged for dinner at night; of course the rule for time will do for noon dinner. Easily mistaken for canvas-back duck.
A 19th-century marinated braise of larded calf's liver, cooked long and slow until it slices like game. A few of the instructions assume a coal range and a cold larder.
- The hinge: keep the heat very lowThree and a half hours of "slow fire" only works if the liver is barely simmering in its own moisture and fat, covered. Anything approaching a boil drives out the juices and leaves the liver grainy and dry; on a modern stove use the lowest burner setting with a heat diffuser, or set the covered pot in a 275-300F oven.
- Larding, in practiceLarding means threading strips of firm pork fat through the meat with a larding needle, not draping it on top. Fatback cut into 1/4-inch lardons is traditional; thick-cut bacon works and adds smoke. Without the internal fat this dish has nothing to keep it moist over three hours.
- The earthen crockThis means a glazed earthenware or stoneware bean pot used as a covered braising vessel, not a modern electric slow cooker. An enameled cast-iron Dutch oven with a tight lid is the closest equivalent; it will conduct heat faster, so err lower.
- Wine-glass of claretA Victorian wine glass is about 2 fl oz, not a modern 6-ounce pour. Claret is British usage for red Bordeaux, so any dry, moderately tannic red is right in spirit.
- The 24-hour marinade"A cool place" meant a cellar or larder around 50F. Marinate in the refrigerator instead, in a non-reactive dish, since the vinegar and oil will pick up metal from bare aluminum or cast iron.
- Vinegar and oil, unmeasuredNo quantities are given. For a whole calf's liver of 2-3 lb, about 2 tablespoons vinegar and 1/4 cup oil is a reasonable reading of "a little," not a swamping marinade. "Salad oil" in period American cookbooks generally meant olive oil.
- Timing as writtenHalf-past two until six is three and a half hours, with the wine added an hour and a half before the end. Modern cooks who prefer liver pink will find this dish is not that; it is meant to be fully cooked and sliceable, closer to a terrine than to sauteed liver.
- Yield and servingA 2-3 lb calf's liver, rolled and tied, serves six to eight. Untie, cool slightly, and slice across the roll; strain the onion and pork juices into a sauce and spoon over.
"Marine" here is often taken to be the anglicized French mariné — the meat sits in vinegar, oil and aromatics before it is cooked, a technique borrowed from the same tradition that gave us marinated venison and boeuf a la mode — though the recipe itself offers no etymology. The telling line is the last one: "easily mistaken for canvas-back duck." The canvasback was the most prized wild duck on 19th-century American tables, its flavor credited to the wild celery it fed on in the Chesapeake, and it commanded prices that put it beyond most households. Comparing a cheap organ meat to it is a boast about thrift as much as about flavor, and that boast is characteristic of The Home Cook Book, a Chicago compilation of contributions from local women (generally traced to the mid-1870s and sold in aid of a charitable home) in which economical dishes are recommended by their resemblance to expensive ones. The signed attribution to Mrs. J. M. Ayer is typical of the book's method: recipes collected household by household, with the contributor's name standing in for a test kitchen.