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Calf's Liver, Roasted
Soak the liver in salt and water an hour to draw out the blood. Wipe perfectly dry, and stuff with a forcemeat made of bread crumbs, two slices of salt pork, chopped small, a shallot, pepper, salt, and a pinch of nutmeg; sweet marjoram and thyme, and if you choose a little sage. Moisten this with melted butter and two raw eggs well beaten. In order to get this into the liver, make an incision with a narrow sharp knife, and without enlarging the aperture where the blade entered, move the point dexterously to and fro, to enlarge the cavity inside. Stuff this full of the forcemeat, sew or skewer up the outer orifice, roast for an hour, basting with butter and water afterward with the gravy in the dripping pan. Pour the gravy over the liver when done.
Roasted liver is very good cold, cut into thin slices like tongue.
A whole stuffed calf's liver, roasted rather than fried — a joint treated like a small roast, meant partly for the cold table. The technique hinges on cutting a pocket without splitting the organ.
- The pocket is the whole trickPush a thin boning knife in once, then pivot the blade inside while keeping the entry hole small, so the forcemeat is enclosed rather than sitting on top. A liver that splits will leak the stuffing and the eggs will scramble in the pan.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "roast," with a dripping pan, and gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern reading. An hour suits a whole calf's liver of a few pounds.
- Cook the stuffing throughThe forcemeat contains raw egg and raw salt pork, so it must reach 165F at the centre. Check the stuffing, not the liver — the liver will be done well before it.
- Expect firm, not pinkAn hour in a moderate oven takes liver well past pink. That suits the recipe's aim: a solid joint that slices cleanly cold, like tongue. If you want it juicy and hot, this is not the recipe to adapt.
- The soakAn hour in salted water will draw out some of the blood and may mellow the strong mineral taste. Milk is a common modern soak. Dry the surface thoroughly or nothing will brown.
- Unmeasured seasoningsNo quantities are given for the herbs. For roughly 2 cups of crumbs, start with a teaspoon each of dried marjoram and thyme, half a teaspoon of sage, and a scant pinch of nutmeg; the salt pork and shallot supply most of the savour.
- Salt porkTwo slices means about 2 oz of fatty cured pork belly. Unsmoked pancetta or thick unsmoked bacon is the closest substitute; if using something salty and smoked, cut back the added salt.
- Basting"Butter and water" means a splash of each in the pan to keep the liver from drying before its own juices run. Once there is gravy in the pan, baste with that and reduce it briefly before pouring over.
- YieldA stuffed liver of a few pounds serves six to eight hot, or leaves a good deal of cold sliced meat, which is what the last line has in mind.
Roasting a whole liver, rather than slicing and frying it, belongs to an older way of thinking about offal as a joint of meat in its own right — a habit English cookery carried into American books throughout the nineteenth century, and one that survives in dishes like stuffed lamb's heart and larded calf's liver. Calf's liver was the expensive grade, milder and more tender than beef, and a household that bought a whole one wanted more than one meal out of it, which explains the closing note about slicing it cold like tongue. The forcemeat is a standard nineteenth-century stuffing formula: crumbs, chopped salt pork for fat, a shallot, egg to bind, and the sweet-herb trio of marjoram, thyme and sage. Its appearance in a general-purpose compendium like this one reflects a period in which cookbooks were still expected to tell a cook what to do with every part of an animal, not merely the cuts a butcher had already trimmed for her.