Liver With Bacon And Onions

Calf’s liver with onions or bacon, or both, was once a popular dish in American restaurants—though it seems to have pretty much disappeared in recent years—and liver with just the onions appears in numerous traditional cuisines (Italy’s fegato alla veneziana, Catalonia’s fetge amb ceba, the higado encebollado of Columbia and Peru, etc.). In England, bacon has long been the main accompaniment, with onions playing a minor role, if present at all. Perhaps the first mention of the dish by an Englishman comes courtesy of one William Wreathcock, an attorney of dubious moral character, who when accused of robbing a clergyman in 1735, offered as his alibi that on the evening of the crime, he had been dining with his clerk and a client at Symond’s Inn on liver and bacon—no mention of onions—until the early hours of the morning. Onions aren’t present, either, in Mrs. Beeton’s recipe for calf’s liver and bacon from 1861. Today, calf’s or lamb’s liver is often served with both accoutrements. I got this recipe in 1998, for an article I was writing for Saveur about London’s Smithfield Market and the surrounding blocks. It comes from The Sirloin, the restaurant portion of the Victorian-era pub called The Hope.Recipe courtesy of cookbook The British Table: A New Look at the Traditional Cooking of England, Scotland, and Wales by Colman Andrews. Click here to purchase your own copy.