Liver and Bacon
Cover slices of liver with boiling water and let stand 5 minutes. Fry bacon, then fry liver in bacon fat.
Three lines and no quantities, which is typical of the Metropolitan's terse house style. The hinge is the cooking time: liver goes grey and grainy in about a minute past done.
- The scalding stepA short soak in boiling water is commonly directed in cook books of this period; it is variously explained as firming the slices and drawing off some blood, and it also loosens the thin membrane around the outside of the lobe. Pat the slices completely dry afterwards or they will steam rather than brown in the fat.
- Peel the membraneNothing is said about the silvery skin on the edge of each slice, but it is worth stripping off once the liver has been scalded: left on, it shrinks in the pan and curls the liver into a cup.
- What kind of liverA 1920s cook book saying "liver" without qualification usually means beef or calf's liver, cut across the lobe. Calf's is milder and more tender; beef liver benefits from the soak. Slices should be about 1/2 inch thick — thinner and they overcook before they colour.
- TimingTwo to three minutes a side over medium-high heat, until the surface is browned and the centre still faintly pink. Liver cooked through to uniform brown is the usual reason people say they dislike it.
- Bacon fatRender the bacon slowly so it gives up enough fat to film the pan, then hold the strips warm while the liver cooks. Much modern bacon is wetter and more sweetly cured than older dry-cured bacon, so it may scorch; keep the heat moderate and pour off any burnt solids before the liver goes in.
- Quantities and yieldReckon on 1/3 to 1/2 lb of liver and two slices of bacon per person. A pound of liver with six slices of bacon serves three.
- ServingOnions softened in the same fat after the liver comes out, with the pan juices poured over, is a common accompaniment of the period, and mashed potato a frequent partner; the recipe itself specifies neither.
Liver and bacon belongs to the long tradition of pairing a lean, strong-flavoured offal with cured pork fat — the bacon supplies both the cooking medium and the salt-and-smoke counterweight to the liver's mineral edge. Cook books of this kind, issued by insurance companies and utilities to be given away to policyholders and customers, favoured cheap protein and very short instructions; liver was among the least expensive cuts at the butcher's and was often recommended for its iron content, at a time when anaemia and diet were much discussed in home-economics literature. The scalding step that opens the recipe appears in American and British cookery writing of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and later fell out of use.