Braised Liver
Take a calf's liver and skewer into shape. Place a small piece of fat pork or bacon on the top of it and around it. In the covered baker, place one-fourth cup each of diced carrot, onion and celery. Add onefourth teaspoon of peppercorns, two cloves, a bit of bay leaf and two cups of water or of brown stock. Cover closely and bake slowly for two hours, removing the cover during the last twenty minutes. Make a brown sauce, using the liquid, and pour it around the liver on serving.
A whole braised calf's liver, treated like a pot roast rather than a pan-fried cutlet. The method works, but the timing belongs to an era of larger, tougher livers and slower ovens.
- The covered bakerThis is a lidded earthenware or enamelled roaster; a Dutch oven or any heavy covered casserole is the direct equivalent. The seal matters more than the material, since the two cups of liquid are all the moisture the dish gets.
- Bake slowlyThe book gives no temperature; a slow to moderate oven, roughly 300-325F, is a reasonable modern reading. The uncovered final twenty minutes is meant to colour the surface and reduce the liquid, so leave the temperature where it is rather than raising it.
- Two hours is longA whole calf's liver of 2-3 lb will be firm and dry at two hours. Liver has almost no connective tissue to break down, so extended braising mainly drives out moisture, and cooks who want it moist will want to stop well short of the stated time; note that USDA guidance for liver is an internal 160F.
- Skewer into shapeThe lobes are folded in and secured so the mass cooks evenly and slices cleanly. Butcher's twine tied at intervals does the job better than skewers and is easier to remove at the table.
- Fat pork or baconSalt pork or thick unsmoked bacon; modern bacon is wetter and more heavily smoked, so use it sparingly or the smoke will dominate the sauce. Traditionally the liver would also be larded with strips drawn through the flesh, which is worth doing if you have a larding needle.
- The brown sauceStrain the braising liquid, press the vegetables through, and thicken with a brown roux of about 2 tablespoons each butter and flour to the cup. Salt is nowhere mentioned in the original and the dish needs it, most easily added at the sauce stage.
- YieldA 2-3 lb calf's liver serves about four to six. Slice it across the grain about a third of an inch thick and pour the sauce around, not over, as directed.
Braising a whole liver rather than frying slices is well attested in nineteenth-century French and Anglo-American cookery, and the vegetable base here is a plain mirepoix of carrot, onion and celery, the same foundation used for any braised joint. Calf's liver was the most highly regarded variety meat of the period, milder and paler than beef liver and priced accordingly, and treating it as a roast made a single organ stretch across a whole table. The Metropolitan Cook Book was issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and distributed free to policyholders, part of a wider corporate campaign linking household nutrition to longevity. Organ meats appear frequently in such books, and were generally cheaper than muscle cuts and valued for their iron.