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Liver Loaf
(Pane di fegato) Cut about one pound of veal liver in thin slices and four chicken livers in two parts and put all this in a saucepan with rosemary and a piece of butter. When this is melted put in another piece and season with salt and pepper. After four or five minutes at a live fire, remove the liver (dry) and grind it together with the rosemary. In the gravy that remains in the saucepan put a big crumb of bread, cut into small pieces and make a paste that will also be ground with the liver. Then rub everything through a sieve, add one whole egg and two yolks and a pinch of grated cheese, diluting with brown stock or water.
Finally put in a smooth mold with a sheet of paper in the bottom, all evenly greased with butter and cook in a double boiler. Remove from the mold when cool and serve cold, with gelatine. 90
A bain-marie liver terrine of the sort served cold at the start of an Italian meal. The hinge is the water bath: the custard of egg and puréed liver must set gently, never boil, or it turns grainy and weeps.
- The double boiler is a bain-marieSet the buttered mold in a roasting pan, pour in hot water to come halfway up, and hold the water at a bare shiver — around 180F, never a rolling boil. Count on 45 to 60 minutes for a 1-quart mold; the center should read 160F and feel just firm.
- "A live fire" means high heatThe liver is seared, not cooked through — four or five minutes over a brisk flame to color it and firm the surface. It finishes cooking in the mold, so overcooking it here is the surest way to a dry, chalky loaf.
- "A big crumb of bread"This means the soft interior of a roll or a thick slice with the crust cut away, roughly 1 to 2 ounces, torn small and worked into the pan drippings until it makes a paste. It is a binder; the amount is meant to be judged by feel rather than weighed.
- The liquid is unmeasured"Diluting with brown stock or water" gives no quantity. Add it a spoonful at a time to the sieved purée until you have a thick batter that drops heavily from the spoon — about 1/2 cup for a pound of liver is a reasonable starting point.
- A "smooth mold"An unfluted, straight-sided mold or small loaf tin, so the cold loaf will turn out cleanly. The sheet of paper in the bottom is a parchment round; butter the tin, lay the paper in, butter it too.
- Grated cheeseThe recipe says only "grated cheese"; in a book of this kind that most likely means Parmesan or another dry grana. No quantity is given beyond a pinch, and it is there for savor rather than for a flavor of its own.
- RosemaryThe recipe gives no amount. It is cooked with the liver and then ground in with it, so the quantity should stay modest; rosemary pounded in raw would dominate everything.
- "Serve cold, with gelatine"That is aspic — clarified brown stock set with gelatin, chopped and spooned around the sliced loaf, or a thin layer poured over the top and chilled. A pound of liver fills a small mold and slices into six to eight antipasto portions.
- ChillingCool in the mold, then refrigerate several hours before unmolding; the loaf firms considerably as it cools and will crumble if turned out warm. Eat within two days.
The Italian Cook Book (Maria Gentile, 1919) is often said to draw on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, and this pane di fegato belongs to a family of Artusi "breads" — pane di meaning a bound, molded loaf of puréed meat or fish rather than anything baked from dough. The technique is the French-influenced one that ran through nineteenth-century Italian bourgeois cooking: sear, pound, sieve, bind with egg, poach in a water bath, serve cold under aspic. Liver was the practical choice for such a dish, cheap and strongly flavored enough to carry a whole loaf. The sieve is the part modern cooks skip; before food processors, forcing the pounded mixture through a fine tamis was the usual way to get the smooth texture the recipe assumes, and it is still what separates a terrine from a paste.