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Pig's Harslet
(English.) Wash and dry 1 pound of calf's liver, 1 pair of sweetbreads, 1/4 pound of fresh pork. Cut these into very thin slices, add salt, pepper, sage, and chopped onion. Arrange in layers, to form a loaf, and cover with a pig's membrane,--which any butcher can obtain,--and bake it, basting it often with butter. When it has cooked 1 1/2 hours, dust it with bread-crumbs, and let it brown. Serve with a brown gravy, made of stock and flavored with sherry.
An offal loaf wrapped in caul fat and roasted slowly. Two things decide whether it works: preparing the sweetbreads properly before they go in, and not letting the liver cook to leather.
- The pig's membrane is caul fatCaul is the lacy fatty membrane from around the pig's stomach. Order it ahead from a butcher or a halal/Latin market; it usually arrives frozen and salted, and should be soaked in tepid water until pliable, then patted dry before wrapping. Barding the loaf in a double layer of thin-cut fatback or bacon is the usual substitute.
- Sweetbreads need preparation the recipe skipsSoak them in several changes of cold water for a few hours until the water runs clear, then blanch briefly, cool, and peel away the outer membrane before slicing. Untreated sweetbreads go grey and strong-tasting, and the membrane shrinks and toughens in the oven.
- No oven temperature is givenA loaf of this kind wants a moderate oven, 325-350F. Higher and the caul renders away and the outside dries before the centre sets.
- An hour and a half is too longAn hour and a half is likely too long -- probably written for a range whose heat could not be set precisely. A loaf of this size is done when the centre reaches about 160F, generally 50-70 minutes at 350F. Calf's liver held for 90 minutes turns grainy and metallic.
- "Fresh pork" means unsalted and uncuredIn the period this distinguished it from salt pork or bacon. Use fatty shoulder or belly; the fat is what binds the layers, so do not trim it lean.
- Sage and onion, in quantityNo amounts are given. For 1 lb liver plus sweetbreads and 1/4 lb pork, roughly 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage (or a scant teaspoon dried) and one small onion, finely chopped, is in keeping with English haslet seasoning.
- The crumb crustDusting with breadcrumbs at the end browns best if the surface is buttery; raising the oven to 425F for the last 8-10 minutes will do it faster than leaving it at the baking temperature.
- YieldAbout 1 3/4 lb of loaf, serving four as a main course with the brown gravy. It slices better after 15 minutes' rest, and it is good cold the next day; Lincolnshire haslet is commonly eaten cold by the slice.
Harslet, more usually spelled haslet or hastlet, is an old English word for the edible innards of a pig, generally traced to Old French hastelet, a small piece of meat roasted on a spit. It survives today chiefly as Lincolnshire haslet, a pork-and-sage loaf sold cold by the slice from butchers' counters, and the connection is clear enough in this version: offal, sage, onion, and caul fat, baked as a loaf rather than spitted. The dish belongs to the thrift end of English cookery, using the parts of the pig that had to be eaten within a day or two of slaughter, though the substitution of calf's liver and sweetbreads for the pig's own lights and liver makes this a genteel reading of a farmhouse dish. It is tagged here simply "(English.)".