liver-msg - 1/15/08
Medieval cooking of liver. Recipes.
NOTE: See also the files: organ-meats-msg, exotic-meats-msg, food-sources-msg, haggis-msg, sauces-msg, sausages-msg, blood-dishes-msg, butchering-msg.
************************************************************************
NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors.
Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s).
Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
************************************************************************
Date: Sun, 3 May 1998 02:31:52 -0700
From: "Anne-Marie Rousseau" <acrouss at gte.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Chopped Liver/ Pate
> Speaking of liver, can anyone help me with documentation & recipe for Pate?
>
> ~~Minna Gantz <KALLYR at aol.com>
There's a liver recipe in Chiquart, but its not very pate like (boo hoo).
More like scrambled eggs, the way I read it.
- --Anne-Marie
Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 21:47:17 -0500 (CDT)
From: jeffrey stewart heilveil <heilveil at students.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: SC - Chopped Liver/ Pate
Salut!
To escape forever being branded by Lord Ras as a spoon tease, I am going
to do my best to fix the situation. Therefore, Here is my recipe,
followed by the one in Alia Atas' Translation of Ein Buch von Guter
Speise... If you leave out the wine/claret out of Alia's that's a pate.
If you go to her website you can get the documentation information you
will probably want.
If e'er I can do anything else...
Your servant,
Bogdan din Brasov
- ---
1/2 lb Liver (chicken. It does make a difference)
1 onion.
1 hardboiled egg
Salt and pepper to taste
1 T margarine
Use the margarine and onion to saute onion. Cook under a lid until it is
carmelized (1/2 hourish)
Add liver to onions. Cover. Saute this until when part of the liver is cut
open it is almost all brown.
Lake off the lid and cook off the liquid.
Blend with the egg, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve it forth...
- ---
Courtesy of Alia Atlas:
http://www.cs.bu.edu/students/grads/akatlas/Buch/recipes.html#recipe16
16. Von einem gerihte von lebern (Of a dish of liver)
Man sol nemen ein lebern und herte eyer. die sol man stozzen in eime
mrser. und daz sol man mengen mit luterm
tranke oder mit wine oder mit ezzige und sol ez malen in einer
senfmlen und nem zwiboln. die solt du syden mit
smaltze oder mit le. daz sol man giezzen ber vische oder ber
wiltpret. Noch dirre wise mahtu vil anders dingez
machen.
One should take a liver (presumably cooked) and hard eggs. One should
pound them in a mortar. And one should mix
that with claret or with wine or with vinegar and should grind it in
a mustard mill and take onions, which you should cook
with fat or with oil. One should pour that over fish or over wild
meat. In this same way, you may make many other things.
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 19:14:22 EDT
From: LrdRas at aol.com
Subject: SC - Will's- more recipes
Here are the few recipes my co-feastocrat at Will's Revenge, His Lordship
Thorstein, was willing to share. :-) Sorry for the lack of documentation but
this isn't my work. Enjoy. They are wonderful. :-)
Leverpostej
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 pound fresh pork liver
* pound fresh pork fat
1 onion, coarsely chopped (* cup)
3 flat anchovy fillets, drained
2 eggs
1* teaspoons salt
* teaspoon white pepper
* teaspoon ground allspice
* teaspoon cloves
* pound fresh pork fat, sliced into long, 1/8 inch thick strips or sheets
Melt the butter in a saucepan, remove from the heat, and stir in the flour.
Add milk and cream and bring to a boil, beating constantly with a whisk until
the sauce is smooth and thick. Let it simmer for a minute, then set aside to
cool, Cut the liver into chunks. Roughly chop the port fat and mix both with
the onion and achieves. Divide the mixture into thirds. PurÈe each batch in
an electric blender at high speed, adding enough sauce to keep the mixture
from clogging the blender. Transfer each completed batch to a large bowl
and beat in any remaining cream sauce. (To make by hand, put the liver,
pork fat, onion and anchovies through the finest blade of a meat grinder
twice, then combine with the cream sauce, beating them together
thoroughly.) Beat the eggs with the salt, pepper, allspice and cloves and
mix thoroughly into the mixture. The blender mixture will be considerably
more fluid than the one made by hand.
Preheat the oven to 350?. Line a 1 quart loaf pan or mold with the strips of
pork fat. Arrange the strips lengthwise or crosswise; they should overlap
slightly and cover the bottom of the pan. If long enough, let them hang over
the sides; otherwise, save enough strips to cover the top. Spoon the liver
mixture into the loaf pan and fold the overhanging strips (or extra strips) of
fat over the top. Cover with a double sheet of aluminum foil, sealing the
edges tightly, and place in a large baking pan. Pour into the baking pan
enough boiling water to reach at least halfway up the side of the loaf pan
and bake in the center of the oven for 2 hours. Remove from the oven and
lift off the foil. When cool, recover with the foil and chill thoroughly.
Liver
paste may be served in * inch thick slices as a first course, as a luncheon
dish or on bread as sm¯rrebr¯d.
<snip of other recipes>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 01:09:20 EDT
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - making liver nips
troy at asan.com writes:
<<
There are also numerous dishes varying from the basic theme of livering
puddings, which are made similarly to black or white puddings, but with
the addition of boiled, ground, crushed, pulverized, what have you,
liver added to the breadcrumbs, cream, etc. >>
The lady of whom i have spoken before taught me to make liver nips:
3 lbs. fatty beef roast (or add a bit of tallow)
2 quarts water
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground peppercorns
1 large onion
1 beef liver
1 1/2 cups plain flour
Boil the roast and tallow with the spices and onions until very tender, 2 to 3 hours. Remove from the boiler, reserving the stock, and place in a roasting pan and place under a broiler to brown. While the roast is browning, make a dough of the liver and flour. Scrape the liver and work into the flour. Form dumplings from the dough by "nipping" bits about the size of large peanuts
from the mass of the dough and drop into the rapidly boiling stock. Serve as
a side dish with the nicely browned roast.
Very High Cholesterolly Yours
Mordonna
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 11:47:07 EDT
From: Mordonna22 at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - making liver nips
troy at asan.com writes:
<<
Okay, so these are liver gnocchi. Kewl! By any chance is it part of the
Celestial Design of the Creator of the First, Proto-Liver-Nip to include
any of the fat floating on the surface of the cooking liquid, or is that
just to help the roast brown and stay moist? Also, does the recipe
really call for 1 beef liver? A beef liver is _big_! Maybe a pound or
so?
Sorry to bug you with these questions, but I'd realy like to actually do
this at some point, and I wanted to be sure I'd be doing it right.
Adamantius >>
Well, as to the fat, it was not incorporated into the dumplings, they are
supposed to be "tight." The idea of the fat for those German farmers was a
source of energy for 20 hour days on the farm.
The livers we used were always from young steers we had killed. I was amazed
the first time I saw a cows liver in the butcher's case at a supermarket. I
didn't know they grew that big. I would recommend about a pound of calves
liver, if you don't happen to be lucky enough to butcher your own.
Mordonna
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 13:43:02 EDT
From: THLRenata at aol.com
Subject: Re: SC - Organ Meats
While perusing my brand-new copy of The Medieval Kitchen I noticed a number of
recipes where the sauce was thickened with liver.
Has anyone tried this? How pervasive is the liver flavor? (Other organ meats
are great, but I just don't like liver.) Is there any way to omit the liver
and still get a reasonable result?
Renata
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 15:59:12 -0400
From: renfrow at skylands.net (Cindy Renfrow)
Subject: Re: SC - Organ Meats
>While perusing my brand-new copy of The Medieval Kitchen I noticed a number of
>recipes where the sauce was thickened with liver.
>
>Has anyone tried this? How pervasive is the liver flavor? (Other organ meats
>are great, but I just don't like liver.) Is there any way to omit the liver
>and still get a reasonable result?
>
>Renata
Hello! The flavor depends on what kind of liver you use & the proportion
to other ingredients. Another period method of thickening sauces is using
boiled blood: boil it till it coagulates, and (sometimes you then fry it,
and then) pass it through a strainer. Then add the blood to your sauce.
Cindy/Sincgiefu
renfrow at skylands.net
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 16:45:24 -0400
From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
Subject: Re: SC - Organ Meats
THLRenata at aol.com wrote:
> While perusing my brand-new copy of The Medieval Kitchen I noticed a number of
> recipes where the sauce was thickened with liver.
>
> Has anyone tried this? How pervasive is the liver flavor? (Other organ meats
> are great, but I just don't like liver.) Is there any way to omit the liver
> and still get a reasonable result?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and answer what I anticipate your
next couple of questoins will be. I do this not out of disrespect, but
because I've looked into this a good deal and I have sort of followed a
specific logical path and come to a definite conclusion about this whole
liver-thickened sauce thing.
Now that you're really confused...here's the situation as I see it.
Others' mileage may vary. Sauces thickened with liver tend to involve
livers (poultry, rabbit or hare, usually but not always raw) pureed in a
fine hair sieve, and added to thicken the sauce with the warning that
the sauce should be heated until thick but not boiled. This would seem
to me to make them a close relative of similar recipes for chawdoun and
various civies ancient and modern, thickened with blood.
Obviously the less liver you use, the less like liver the dish will
taste. You could use blood, which would then make the dish taste like
blood, which some people don't mind and others would rather die than
eat. It's your call. In general, blood tastes rich and slightly gamey
but without the trace sweet bitterness of liver.
Now, as a substitute for livers and/or blood, sources like Taillevent
would recommend toast slowly roasted on a gridiron until deep, deep
mahagony brown, but not burnt black (the rack on a 250-300 degree oven
works great for this), crumbled and steeped in vinegar and/or verjuice
until soft enough to push through a sieve. Red wine vinegar helps with
the color illusion. It really isn't the same, but it seems to have been
done when livers were not available for one reason or another.
Still, you might experiment and possibly find that you can make a nice,
rich, velvety sauce that doesn't just taste much like liver at all, if
you don't overdo it on the liver puree. Just as a benchmark, liverwurst
is much milder than pure liver because it's maybe a third liver and two
thirds fat and muscle meat. You may find that a sauce thickened with
liver might take less still to do the job, and Not Offend. I have no
statistics available on this, but generally it's a good idea to have
some firsthand experience with something like this before abandoning it.
You will probably live a richer life as a result.
After that, of course, you always have the option of the dark toast ; ).
Adamantius
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 02:57:43 -0500
From: allilyn at juno.com (LYN M PARKINSON)
Subject: Re: SC - Organ Meats
I find that if I cut up a chicken liver in small bits and then stir fry
it very quickly in a bit of butter, it does not have the slightly musty
quality that liver sometimes gets when simmered. Broiling keeps a
cleaner taste, too, I think. Try this, before you puree it, and see if
it helps. I also like the taste when it is cooked in the fat from bacon,
if you don't go bananas about cholesterol.
Allison
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 1999 06:35:51 -0800
From: Anne-Marie Rousseau <acrouss at gte.net>
Subject: SC- period liver recipes was Re: SC - Finger foods
hi all from Anne-Marie
One of my FAVORITE recipes from Epilario is a pasty filled with chicken
livers, hearts and gizzards plus sour cherries. Yum! Sorry, its not my
recipe, so I dont have a reconstruction (Maestro Eduardo made it for a
party once)
The sour cherries do a number on the dusty taste of the liver. Yum! (oh, I
said that already, didnt I?)
There's a recipe in Chiquart as well, but that's more of a scrambled eggs
and liver dish, not very suited to your setup, it sounds.
- --AM
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 21:14:58 +1000
From: "Lee-Gwen Booth" <piglet006 at globalfreeway.com.au>
Subject: Re: SC - Was Ravioli, dumplings, and excoriation - now cooking Liver
From Gwynydd of Culloden unto the Gathered Cooks of the List, Greetings:
From: Sieggy der Omnivore
> (and besides, less than 3 people out of a thousand know how to prepare
> liver properly, I'd wager . . .)
Well, if my Lady is any judge, I am one of those 3. I made her a dish of
organ meats from "Pleyn Delit" for her work lunches and she thought that it
was wonderful (it was far too strongly flavoured for my tastes - but then, I
am not much of an offal eater). I do, however, have some questions about
the recipe which one of the more experienced cooks can probably answer.
First, the recipe (wouldn't want to be accused of being a "spoon-tease"!).
Noumbles
Take noumbles of Deer oper or oper beest; paboile hem; kerf hem to dyce.
Take the self broth or better; take brede and grynde with the broth, and
temper it up with a gode quantite of vynegar and wyne. Take the oynons and
parboyle hem, and mynce hem small and do per=to. Color it with blode and do
pre=to powder fort and salt, and boyle it wele, and serue it forth.
Pleyn Delit redaction
2 beef kidneys (ca 11/2 - 2 lbs)
3/4c beef broth or stock
1/4c breadcrumbs
2tb vinegar
2-3 onions. peeled
1/4tsp each ginger, mace, and pepper
1/2tsp salt (or to taste)
Cover the kidneys with cold, salted water and bring to a boil; then pour off
the water (or save it for broth, if you have no beef stock). Chop kidneys
into pieces about 1 inch square, or a little more. Beat the breadcrumbs
into the broth (start by moistening it with just a tablespoon or two)and
stir in the wine and vinegar.
Meanwhile, parboil onions in salted water for about five minutes. Drain,
and chop the onions. Add them along with seasoning and chopped kidneys to
the sauce and bring to a simmer; cover and cook gently for 25 to 30 minutes.
NOTE:
In the notes, the authors say that "noumbles" is probably best translated as
various organ meats, that being so, I used (lamb) kidney and (ox) liver
together.
I boiled the onion in the same water as the meat and then used the resultant
liquid for the stew. As well, the organ meats exuded quite an amount of
blood which I poured back into the stew.
Okay, that is the recipe, now the questions;
1) How are stews of this nature served? That is, are they served alone in a
bowl or over something like rice?
2) I added cloves and galingale to the spices - just because they seemed
"right" somehow. According to my Lady, the cloves really "made" the dish,
but I don't know how accurate period-wise it was to add these extras. As
well, I increased the ginger to 1/2tsp, which she thought was about right.
3) The original says that the meat should be minced small - why then do the
authors have them as 1 inch pieces? My feeling was that this was too big.
Many Thanks
Gwynydd
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 11:29:21 -0400
From: "Robin Carroll-Mann" <harper at idt.net>
Subject: Re: SC - Was Ravioli, dumplings, and excoriation - now cooking Liver
And it came to pass on 23 Apr 00,, that Lee-Gwen Booth wrote:
> From Gwynydd of Culloden unto the Gathered Cooks of the List, Greetings:
> Noumbles
>
> Take noumbles of Deer oper or oper beest; paboile hem; kerf hem to dyce.
> Take the self broth or better; take brede and grynde with the broth, and
> temper it up with a gode quantite of vynegar and wyne. Take the oynons
> and parboyle hem, and mynce hem small and do per=to. Color it with blode
> and do pre=to powder fort and salt, and boyle it wele, and serue it forth.
[snip]
> Okay, that is the recipe, now the questions;
> 2) I added cloves and galingale to the spices - just because they seemed
> "right" somehow. According to my Lady, the cloves really "made" the
> dish, but I don't know how accurate period-wise it was to add these
> extras. As well, I increased the ginger to 1/2tsp, which she thought
> was about right.
"Powder fort" was a spice mixture of strong-tasting spices. As with a
modern curry powder, garam masala, or apple-pie spice, there was
probably more than one valid way to make it. None of your spices
above look inappropriate to me.
> 3) The original says that the meat should be minced small - why then do
> the authors have them as 1 inch pieces? My feeling was that this was
> too big.
If you look again at the original, you'll see that it's the onions that are to
be minced small; the numbles are to be carved "to dyce", which I
*think* means into pieces the size and shape of playing dice.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:57:41 -0400
From: harper at idt.net
Subject: Re: SC - liver (was rare foods at feasts-rant)
And it came to pass on 27 Sep 00, , that Decker, Terry D. wrote:
> Of course, liver is very much a matter of personal taste, so perhaps some
> others will share their recipes and opinions.
>
> Bear
Personally, the only kind of liver I can tolerate is Jewish-style
chopped (chicken) liver. But my lord husband loves it fried with
onions, and orders it in restaurants now and then. Anyway, for
those who do like the stuff, here's a period recipe:
Source: Ruperto de Nola, _Libro de Guisados_ (Spanish, 1529)
Translation: Lady Brighid ni Chiarain (Robin Carroll-Mann)
Vinegar Which is Marinated Liver
VINAGRE QUE ES HIGADO ADOBADO
Take onions, and cut them very small, like fingers, and fry them gently
with fatty bacon; and then take the liver of a kid or a lamb or a goat and
cut them into slices the size of a half walnut, and fry it gently with the
onion until the liver loses its color; then take a crustless piece of toasted
bread soaked in white vinegar, and grind it well, and dissolve it with
sweet white wine; and then strain it through a woolen cloth; and then
cast it over the onion and the liver, all together in the casserole; and cast
in ground cinnamon; and cook until it is well thickened and when it is
cooked, prepare dishes.
Lady Brighid ni Chiarain
Settmour Swamp, East (NJ)
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:32:42 -0500
From: "Decker, Terry D." <TerryD at Health.State.OK.US>
Subject: Historic Liver recipes (was SC - liver )
I was perusing Sabina Welserin last night and thinking about liver. How was
it prepared? Were any types of liver avoided? What was the medical
philosophy concerning liver? With Brighid's post from de Nola, I thought a
thread on historic liver recipes and documentation might be fun.
Not being into liverwurst, I'm thinking of trying the liver dish and the
liver tart from Welser. The recipes given below are from Valois Armstrong's
translation of Das Kochbuch von Sabina Welserin.
Bear
21 A liver dish
Then take a liver from a lamb and cut it into little pieces the size of a calf's
sweetbreads and wrap around each piece a small lamb's caul and stick it onto
a spit and roast it like small spitted birds on a grill.
26 If you would make good liverwurst
First take a quarter of a pig's liver, also a quarter of a pig's lungs, chop them small, after that chop bacon into small cubes and put salt and caraway seeds into it. The liver and lungs must first be cooked, before they are chopped, and afterwards pour as much of this broth on the chopped meat as you feel is enough. Then take the intestines from the slaughterhouse and fill them full, then you have good sausage.