Liver

Fegato alla veneziana: calf’s liver cooked for seconds into slow-stewed onions, with white polenta.

Liver is the offal most people have eaten and the one most people remember not liking — usually because it was cooked grey, dry and chalky. Cooked quickly and seasoned boldly, it is one of the great cheap foods: rich, mineral, faintly sweet, and ready in minutes. It is also the most nutrient-dense ordinary food there is, which is both its appeal and its only real caution.

What it is, and whose

The liver is the large glandular organ of the abdomen, and every meat animal’s is eaten:

• Calf’s liver is the prestige liver of British, French and Italian cooking — pale, mild and tender.
• Beef liver is darker, stronger and cheaper.
• Chicken liver is the everyday liver of Jewish and French cooking, and the base of most pâtés.
• Pork liver goes into pâtés, faggots and the Danish leverpostej.
• Duck and goose liver are the foie gras birds.
• Deer and rabbit liver are the hunter’s — see game offal.

A word that began as foie gras

The Italian word for liver, fegato, comes from a fig. Late Latin ficatum is short for iecur ficatum, “fig-stuffed liver” — the Romans fattened geese on figs to make what was, in effect, foie gras. So across much of Romance-speaking Europe, the ordinary word for liver was once the word for the luxury version. (Tourist histories add that Venice’s liver-and-onions descends from the Roman liver-and-figs, with onions taking the figs’ place. That lineage is not established; it reads like a story built backwards from the word.)

How to cook it well

• Cook it fast and leave it — or don’t. Recipes consistently say to sear liver briefly and serve it pink; overcooked liver goes, in Hank Shaw’s phrase, “dry and chalky.” Note, though, that the USDA’s advice for organ meats is 160 °F, which is past pink; and chicken liver should always reach 165 °F because Campylobacter lives inside it (see safety). Calf’s liver cooked pink is a choice against the guidance, not an endorsed practice.
• Slice it evenly — about 1 cm (⅜ inch) — so every piece cooks in the same time.
• Trim the membrane and any tubes.
• Soaking in milk or buttermilk, and brining deer liver overnight, are widespread cooks’ practices; Shaw brines deer liver in about ¼ cup of salt per quart of water, then soaks it in milk. What exactly a soak removes has not been measured, so it is offered as practice.
• Onions, bacon and something sharp — mustard, vinegar, lemon — are the classic companions, because liver is rich and needs cutting.

The dishes

• Liver and onions, liver and bacon (Britain). A recipe for calf’s liver and bacon is in Sara Harrison’s House-keeper’s Pocket Book of 1733.
• Fegato alla veneziana (Venice). Calf’s liver cut in strips, cooked for seconds into a big mass of slowly stewed onions, served with polenta: Fegato alla Veneziana.
• Chopped liver (Ashkenazi Jewish). Historically goose liver, now chicken, with onions, hard-boiled egg and schmaltz: Chopped Chicken Liver. “What am I, chopped liver?” is traced to Jimmy Durante’s 1954 television show.
• Liver sauce (Philippines). Sarsa ng lechon, the sauce served with roast pig, is traditionally made with pork liver. The best-known bottled brand, Mang Tomas, was for a time sold without liver, then put it back in.
• Pâtés and terrines — the collection holds several, including Classic Beef Liver Pâté and Bacon-Beef Liver Pâté with Rosemary and Thyme. A full section on pâtés and terrines is planned.
• Foie gras. French law defines foie gras as “the liver of a duck or goose fattened by gavage” — force-feeding is part of the legal definition. It is depicted in an Egyptian tomb of about 2500 BC. Production or sale is banned in California and several European countries.

A field note: floured, fried, with bacon and mustard

The liver in this collection’s own recipe is cooked the way it has long been cooked in this kitchen: dredged in flour seasoned with Zatarain’s Creole seasoning, fried in butter or bacon fat, served with the bacon on top and stone-ground mustard for dipping. The mustard does the job the Venetians give to vinegar and the British to bacon — it cuts the richness. The recipe is Fried Liver with Bacon. A pâté, made from the same liver, is the other favourite.

How much is too much

A 100 g serving of pan-fried beef liver carries about 7,700 µg of vitamin A — about 2.6 times the adult daily upper limit — plus more than the daily upper limit of copper. An occasional serving is fine; the limit is a long-term daily benchmark. But it is why liver is a weekly dish, not a daily one, and why Britain’s NHS advises avoiding liver entirely in pregnancy. The details are on safety and the law.

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In this dive: What offal is · The history · Safety and the law · Liver · Heart and tongue · Kidneys, sweetbreads and brains · Tripe and intestines · Blood · Heads, feet and tails · Gizzards · Game offal · Fish offal · Every part on the list · Corrections