Offal: A Global History by Nina Edwards Read Free Book Online

just keep them moving a little or the dish would soon lose its air of bourgeois simplicity and natural grace; skim away any fat carefully after about 1½ hours of slow simmer, arrange your vegetables around the giblets, with the wings in place of honour; then so that the potatoes keep your sauce unctuous, pass it through a sieve.
Pig’s Harslet
    —from Mrs A. B. Marshall’s Cookery Book (1888)
    Wash and dry some liver, sweetbreads and fat and bits of pork, beating the latter with a rolling pin to make it tender; season with pepper, salt, sage and a little onion shred fine; when mixed, put all into a caul, and fasten it up tight with a needle and thread. Roast it on a hanging-jack or by a string.
    Or serve in slices with parsley for a fry. Serve with a sauce of port-winer and water, and mustard, just boiled up and put into a dish.
Ox-tail en Hochepot
    —from Prosper Montagné, Larousse Gastronomique (1900)
    Cut the ox-tail, whether skinned or not, into uniform chunks. Put into a stock-pot with 2 raw pig’s trotters, each cut into 4 or 5 pieces, and a whole raw pig’s ear. Add enough water to cover, bring to the boil, remove scum and simmer gently for 2 hours. Add a small cabbage cut into quarters and blanched, 3 carrots, 2 turnips, in quarters or cut into small uniform pieces, and 10 small onions. Simmer gently for 2 hours. Drain the pieces of ox-tail and the pig’s trotters. Arrange them on a large, deep, round dish. Put the vegetables in the middle. Surround with grilled chipolata sausages and the pig’s ear cut into strips. Serve boiled potatoes separately.
Blanquette of Calves’ Hearts
    —from Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs Rorer’s New Cook Book (Philadelphia, c. 1902)
    Wash two calves’ hearts thoroughly in cold water; cut them into cubes of one inch. Put them into a saucepan; cover with boiling water, bring to a boil, skim and simmer gently for two hours. When ready to serve rub together two tablespoonfuls of butter and two of flour; add the liquor in which the hearts were cooked; stir until boiling; add a teaspoonful of salt and a saltspoonful of pepper. Take from the fire, add the yolks of two eggs. Dish the hearts and pour over the sauce. Garnish the dish with carefully boiled rice, and send it at once to the table. This makes an exceedingly nice dish for lunch. A heavy rope or garnish of nicely cooked green peas outside of the rice makes it more sightly.
Foie Gras
    —from Auguste Escoffier’s The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery , trans. H. L. Cracknell and R. J. Kaufmann (New York, 1997)
    For serving as a hot dish the goose liver should firstly be well trimmed and the nerves removed; it is then studded with quarters of small raw peeled truffles which have been seasoned with salt and pepper, quickly set and stiffened over heat with a little brandy together with a bay-leaf. Before using the truffles leave them to cool in a tightly closed terrine. After the foie gras has been studded wrap it completely in slices of pork fat or pig’s caul, and place in a tightly closed terrine for a few hours.
Brain Fritters
    —from Misses A. and M. Schauer, The Schauer Cookery Book (Brisbane and Sydney, 1909)
    Carefully wash an ox brain, and boil it for a quarter of an hour in well-seasoned stock. When the brain is cold, cut it into slices, dip each of them in batter, drop them as you do them into a pan half full of smoking fat. To make the batter, mix two large tablespoonfuls of fine flour with four of cold water, stir in a tablespoonful of dissolved butter, the yolk of an egg and a pinch of salt and pepper; when ready to use beat the white of an egg to a strong froth, and mix with it. As you take them up, throw them on paper to absorb any grease clinging to them, serve on a napkin or ornamental dish-paper.
Roasted Foie Gras with Crispy Chicken Skin,
Chicken Heart Gravy, Peppercorn Biscuit
and Spiced Honey
    —Jesse Schenker, 2012
    1 lb (450 g) grade A foie gras (portioned into around 15 pieces)
1 cup (250 g)