Please, what is the significance of the term ‘chopped liver’? A certain section here uses it quite frequently and I have waited and hoped for context to solve the riddle for me, but my patience has run out. What the heck do you mean by it?

When one is being ignored, the complaint is, "What am I, chopped liver?" supposedly from the nature of chopped liver as a bland side dish in Jewish cuisine. This is frequently the case here when someone posts the answer to some burning question and the thread goes on for some time as though the question hadn't been answered. Then someone else posts the same answer and everyone comments on the appropriateness of the answer. The person who had posted the answer originally might comment on being chopped liver.

One man's chopped liver is another man's pâté.

Dear dxb: I am equally unfamiliar with implications of "chopped liver', except that I doubt
that many in U.S. would regard it as a delicacy. I still remember when it was discovered
that raw chopped liver would greatly benefit victims of pernicious anemia. Taken with ice
cream it was dramatically therapeutic. Now the idea of chopped liver inciuces instant nausea.
But I am not an initiate of the mysteries of the current use of the phrase.

Incidentally, liver used to be considered a delicacy. I thought "offal" referred only to the
less appetizing left overs - the guts,glands, and worse. Which reminds me of having read
somewhere that sailors long ago had discovered that eating the bilge rats would cure
scurvy. Rats can synthesize vitamin C in their adrenals, apparently. Yum, yum.

and here we have an example of Faldage being treated, almost instantaneously as it were, as chopped liver.

Twenty seconds.

Really, tsuwm. Ya coulda made some neutral comment saying you weren't sure either and waited for another couple like that till someone else came along and explained it all and *then, "What am I, chopped liver?" Then the lovely ASp could drop in and say, "You'll always be pâté to me."

oh, I know--but it was too tough to wait (and risk losing the chance); not a choice I was prepared to make so early in the day.

OK, that was very clear, thank you very much Faldage. I get the picture now.

The OED includes liver and kidneys in its definition of offal, by the way, despite descibing it as waste stuff etc. I like good quality liver, but I understand it can raise cholesterol levels and that has become an issue.

Regarding rats, I recall reading that:

a) They were used by some hardy souls to supplement the meat in the diet on naval vessels in particular.

b) Some sailors specialised in catching them and sold them to others.

c) The practice was forbidden by most naval authorities on health grounds.

I hadn't heard the suggestion that they would fend off scurvy.

A mother and daughter team has come up with a cookbook as a companion work to Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series. It is a collection of recipes for meals mentioned in the books and includes several recipes for miller, as the beast was known on the table.

Dear Faldage: you reminded me of a cartoon long ago, showing two prisoners chai;ned
in a dungeon, each knawing a rat bone. One aesthete says judgematically: "A good rat,
but not a great rat."

but not a great rat

It's all in the presentation.

It's all in the presentation.

From "Blackadder goes forth"
(based in the trenches of World Wat I)

Baldrick: Right, how about a nice meal, while you chew it over?

Blackadder: [suspicious] What's on the menu?

Baldrick: Rat. [shows him a big black rat] Saute or fricassee.

Blackadder: [peers at the rat] Oh, the agony of choice. Saute involves...?

Baldrick: Well, you take the freshly shaved rat, and you marinade it in a puddle for a while.

Blackadder: Hmm, for how long?

Baldrick: Until it's drowned. Then you stretch it out under a hot light bulb, then you get within dashing distance of the latrine, and then you scoff it right down.

Blackadder: So that's sauteing, and fricasseeing?

Baldrick: Exactly the same, just a slightly bigger rat.

Please, what is the significance of the term ‘chopped liver’?

Ouf, I shoulda come in here first! thanks for asking this, dxb....I finally figured it out, from context, in another thread here (and now I cannot remember the thread subject - back in a jiff...)...

Edit: It was Kiran's "Correctness" thread....There's a fine example of chopped liver in there. Paté, one could even say, as has been pointed out....

Or chopped haggis (yum).

My grandmother (may she rest in peace) used to love to heat-up that strained liver that came in the little baby jars (they were for my baby brother) when she stayed with us. She's dump the puréed liver into a sauce pot, stir it, heat it up, and then chow out. Just the fumes in the house were enough to make me sick (literally, believe me). I've hated liver ever since. (I was 8 years old then) My folks used to like liver and onions, but they had to stop making it because they got tired of watching me and my little sister throw up at the dinner table. Not kidding.

Oh, boy, can I relate to the liver and onions story, Whitman. When I was a young lass, it was a special treat to go to the local Picadilly Cafeteria. This was a fairly small town, and there were no "fancy" restaurants back then, so the cafeteria was the Best place to go out to eat.

My mother would always order the Liver and Onions. I was always aghast that she would order something so perfectly horrible, when there was such a glorious array of food showcased, that she could otherwise choose from!

Incidently.....my mother is one of those people who has a very bland sense of taste, and cannot abide many foods the rest of us take for granted:
Chocolate.....the woman HATES chocolate, for cryin' out loud! Tea.....whoever heard of a southern born and bred woman who hates tea?!
Coffee..... the woman cannot even stand the smell of coffee; she's a freak, I tell you!
Pizza.....I'm NOT kidding here......she does not care for pizza.....but if she is forced to eat it, will only do so if it has pineapples on it.
Sea Food of any kind.....this woman is living her life without benefit of tasting lobster dipped in drawn butter, shrimp dipped in marinara
sauce, lemon herb fish.......'tis sad, so sad......

Yet, she likes Liver and Onions???!!!

But she had the good taste to have you as a daughter!

Says the small voice from the South:

I like liver and onions...and chopped liver, too. Not being it, mind you, but I do like chopped liver and don't find it bland at all, but rather...exciting.

Call it a sheltered life. But I draw the line at rats. How truly offal!