Recipes Of The Damned–May 22, 2000: Danish Lever Pastej (Liver Paste)
From A World Of Good Eating: A Collection of Old and New Recipes From Many Lands, Heloise Frost/Jack Frost Studios, Phillips Publishers, Inc., 1951
Today’s recipe rehashes (as it were) a staple of these recipes: liver. I don’t propose liver paste as a startling new revelation or horror to my readership, since we’ve dealt with organ meats and such before. I do find it amusing that there is a different connotation to calling a dish “paste” than to calling it “paté,” however. Paté is elegant, European, sophisticated, perhaps a sign of highbrow culture. It is enjoyed with truffles, caviar, champagne, cognac. Paste, on the other hand, is surely that white gunky stuff that your first grade teacher kept trying to persuade you to put on the construction paper instead of eating it. It is enjoyed with crackers, a lukewarm pint carton of chocolate milk, with Pop-Rocks to follow if you’re really lucky. It sounds like its texture would be squishy and adhesive, rather than silky and smooth. Yet really, it is just the same stuff, and what’s in a name? You either like it or you don’t, but somehow it seems to sell better as paté.
A World of Good Eating is a charming little book I bought from a frequent reader of the site (click here to learn about shopping there: www.antiquesdist.com). I think it must have been a private publishing project, quite likely of the Frost family. It’s comb-bound, and the text is hand-printed in a hand far neater than I have ever been able to achieve. The recipes, collected and tested by “New England Housewife” Heloise Frost, are accompanied by illustrations by Ellen A. Nelson (who is also credited with the Scandinavian recipes, so the liver paste is actually her fault). The countries represented are British Isles, China, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Scandinavia, and America. (We’ll let pass the fact that Scandinavia is not a single country, and that constituents of the British Isles would argue the point as well.) The contents are mostly inoffensive: Yorkshire Pudding, Irish Boiled Potatoes, Toad In the Hole, Mandarin Shrimp, Chicken Marengo, and Swedish Meatballs are typical. When I first heard about it I was sure I’d be able to refer to it as A World of Hurt, but no, it only has a small proportion of troubling offerings. It’s a cute little project, and I just have to wonder why it was undertaken in the first place. In 1951 were there no books available that collected such recipes together? Or that simplified the steps required? Or maybe this was a Christmas gift for family and friends. Maybe some of you still have copies!
Danish Lever Pastej (Liver Paste)
1 lb. liver
1 lb. lean salt pork
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1 egg 1 medium onion
1 tablespoon Anchovy Paste
pepper to taste
1 cup milk
Scald the liver and cook gently for 5 minutes, then put through a food chopper, together with the pork and onion, 3 times to make a smooth paste. Add the rest of the ingredients and a little milk and mix well.
Place in a loaf pan. Place the pan in another pan containing warm water, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
From A World Of Good Eating: A Collection of Old and New Recipes From Many Lands, Heloise Frost/Jack Frost Studios, Phillips Publishers, Inc., 1951
Side Dishing
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