Rod Keys said:
Long ago I had a cook book on Russian or maybe Ukrainian
cooking. It's long lost now.
But it included "traditional" recipes for liver based
soups .. usually chicken liver I think.
It seems to me the basic idea was onion, cut up liver or
chicken livers, mushrooms, a grain like millet or even
barley and maybe even root vegetable like carrots or
parsnips.
As I recall, I made a couple of the recipe's and thought
the stuff was really very good but also really rich, heavy
and filling which I suppose on a long and cold Russian
night is just the right idea.
Sounds German to me. That's a classic German recipe for
liver dumplings. My Mom and both Grandmas made soup with
liver dumplings like that, and some Aunts and great-aunts
even made them with venison liver.
Ground liver, onions, either barley or breadcrumbs, a little
finely diced root veggie. Enough of the starch so the mashed
stuff can be easily formed into balls and dropped into soup.
Start the soup with a broth. Add some diced carrots and a
couple other root veggies. Bring to a boil. Then drop the
dumpling material into it to form balls.
If you're Mexican, this would be Albongidas soup with only a
couple of changes. The soup broth includes diced tomatoes.
The dumpling is based on finely ground beef that might not
include liver.
Given that I've had such soup from German and Mexican
background, I find it easy to believe it would appear in
almost any other ethnic book, though.