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Devilled Calf's Liver with Bacon
Mix on a plate a tablespoon on with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Roll in repeatedly six slices fresh calf's liver a third of an inch thick, arrange them on a broiler and broil for three minutes on each side. Remove to a table, evenly spread a devilled butter on both sides of each piece, arrange on the broiler again and broil for two minutes more on each side. Dress on a hot dish, place six thin slices of broiled bacon over and serve.
A broiler recipe from an era when "devilled" meant mustard and cayenne rather than a filled egg. The text as printed has a typesetting gap, and the timings belong to a much cooler broiler than yours.
- The missing word"A tablespoon on with a teaspoon salt" is a broken line; the sense is a tablespoon of oil mixed with the salt and pepper on a plate, in which the slices are turned to coat. Filippini's other broiled meats use the same oil-salt-pepper plate.
- Devilled butterThe recipe does not say what goes into it. A workable reconstruction is softened butter worked with dry English mustard and cayenne, with a little Worcestershire and lemon juice: roughly 4 oz butter to a teaspoon of mustard and a good pinch of cayenne for six slices. Keep it cold until the moment it goes on, or it runs off the hot liver.
- The hinge is donenessTen minutes total on a modern broiler will turn third-inch calf's liver grey and grainy. Give it about 2 minutes a side under a preheated element, spread the butter, and return it only long enough to glaze — under a minute a side. It should stay faintly pink inside.
- "Broiler" means the rackIn 1906 this is the gridiron over or under direct heat, not a covered oven setting. A ridged grill pan on high heat reproduces it more faithfully than an oven broiler and gives you the marks.
- Buying the liverAsk for calf's (veal) liver, not beef, and have it sliced to a third of an inch — thicker slices will not cook through in these timings, thinner ones seize. Pull off the outer membrane before seasoning or the slices curl on the grill.
- The baconPeriod bacon was often fattier and more heavily salted than supermarket streaky. Broil or fry it separately until crisp and drain it, since the devilled butter already carries salt.
- YieldSix slices with six rashers serves six as a course in a long dinner, or three as a modern main. Green vegetable or a sharp salad cuts the richness.
Filippini, for many years associated with Delmonico's in New York, compiled The International Cook Book in 1906 as a survey of national kitchens, and this entry sits squarely in the English tradition: to "devil" a food is to season it hot with mustard and cayenne and brown it, a usage recorded in English cookery from the later eighteenth century and usually traced to the notion of infernal heat. Devilling was a common treatment for leftovers and for offal, both of which needed a strong hand. Calf's liver with bacon was familiar chophouse and hotel fare on both sides of the Atlantic in this period, when organ meats were eaten without comment -- though calf's liver was the prized grade rather than the cheapest offal. The pairing survives because bacon fat and salt do for liver what the mustard butter does, which is to answer its mineral edge.