Eating Well: Looking at liver recipes from Kenneth Roberts' table
14.03.11
I was contemplating putting together an austere Maine fish chowder (made with haddock, water, potato, milk, bay leaf and a scraping of onion) when Down East’s updated edition of “Good Maine Food: Ancient and Modern New England Food and Drink” by Marjorie Mosser arrived.
Mosser’s book, first published in 1939, has the original notes made by Kenneth Roberts and a new foreword and recipe notes by food historian Sandra Oliver. When it was delivered, I immediately looked to see how Mosser made fish chowder in 1939 for Kenneth and Anna Roberts, her aunt and uncle, in Kennebunk, when she wasn’t busy typing the manuscripts of Kenneth Roberts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novels.
She skipped the bay leaf, but added crisply fried diced salt pork and put split common crackers, soaked in warm milk, into the chowder. That sounded delicious, and my opinion of Mosser’s good taste in recipes was set at excellent until I turned the page and saw a recipe for liver soup. I’ve never been offered liver soup, so I read the instructions to find out what it is — and why someone wouldn’t ask to be excused from the table when a tureen of this delight was sent forth.
Source: The Forecaster