Why does aged cheese taste like liver?
Both cheese and liver owe their savory, almost mineral depth to overlapping volatile compounds — a convergence that has nothing to do with shared ingredients and everything to do with shared biochemistry.
The oregano-like phenol carvacrol appears in both aged cheese and cooked liver at concentrations well above detection threshold, which is why the two foods register as unexpectedly kin — pungent, savory, and faintly medicinal in the same register.
See exactly how far over the detection threshold each compound is — the part of the chemistry that explains why this pairing works. Plus the full ranked list for any ingredient, compound index, and Compare tool.
OAV (Odor Activity Value) = concentration ÷ detection threshold. Numbers above 1 mean the compound contributes detectably to aroma.