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Mutton Liver, Minute
Procure twelve thin slices fresh mutton liver, place on a plate, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, lightly moisten with cold milk, then roll in flour. Heat two tablespoons good leaf lard in a frying pan, arrange in the livers one beside another and briskly cook for one and a half minutes on each side. Dress on a dish, squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon and sprinkle a half teaspoon finely chopped parsley over. Remove all the fat from pan, add half ounce butter, shuffle on fire until a light brown, pour it over livers and serve.
BEETROOT BROTH WITH CREAM Prepare a beetroot broth, adding a gill thick cream, heat for two minutes, divide in six cups and serve.
A fast saute of thin-sliced liver, finished with lemon and browned butter. The whole thing takes under five minutes once the pan is hot, so everything should be cut and measured first.
- The hinge: keep it thin and briefThe recipe says only "thin slices," and ninety seconds a side assumes something on the order of a quarter-inch. Thicker slices will need longer, and pushing the cooking to compensate tends to turn liver grainy and dry. Slice thin, cook fast, and do not overshoot.
- Mutton liverMutton means an adult sheep, and its liver is strong and dark. Lamb liver, far easier to find, is the same organ from a younger animal and is milder; calf's liver is milder still. Any of them work at this thickness.
- Leaf lardLeaf lard is the mild fat from around the kidneys, prized because it has almost no pork flavour. Ordinary lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all do the job here; you only need enough to film the pan.
- Milk then flourThe milk is only a light moistening, enough to make the flour adhere; the common belief that it draws off some of the liver's bitterness is traditional rather than proven. Dredge just before the liver goes into the pan, or the coating turns pasty.
- Half an ounce of butterAbout one tablespoon. "Shuffle on fire until a light brown" means swirl it over the heat until the milk solids colour and it smells nutty, then pour it over at once before it goes past brown to black.
- Pan disciplineArrange the slices in a single layer, "one beside another" as the recipe has it. Crowded liver steams in its own juices and never browns.
- YieldThe recipe states no number served; twelve thin slices would plausibly do four as a main course, or six as part of a larger meal. Taste for seasoning at the table; liver takes salt well.
Liver cooked "minute" belongs to the vocabulary of the professional kitchen rather than the home one: "a la minute" simply means cooked to order on the spot, the opposite of a braise or a stew held in the steam table. That mutton liver appears at all is a mark of the period: a cook was expected to know what to do with every part of the animal. As lamb displaced mutton on English-speaking tables in the twentieth century, and as organ meats fell out of general favour, this cut became much harder to find in retail butchery, though it remains ordinary in parts of the Mediterranean and the Middle East.