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Liver Fried with Bacon

A dish of sliced liver fried with bacon, optionally served with onions, parsley, lemon, or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver Fried with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Dredge the liver slices in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt the dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the liver slices over medium‑high heat.

  3. Fry the bacon until crispy.

  4. Place the liver on a hot dish.

  5. Top the liver with the bacon.

  6. If desired, fry finely chopped onions until browned.

  7. Serve the onions around the liver.

  8. Garnish with crisp parsley and lemon slices.

  9. Serve with melted butter or a butter‑flour sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Liver
Is the main dish, cooked quickly so the outside browns while the inside stays tender.
Flour
Dredging coats the slices, helping them brown and giving a light crust.
Bacon
Its rendered fat and crisp texture add savoury flavour and contrast to the liver.
Dripping
Fat for frying that conducts heat evenly and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Fry the liver over medium‑high heat. Liver is delicate and overcooks quickly; high heat browns the surface fast, and leaving it too long turns it dry and tough.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, parsley, lemon, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, parsley, lemon, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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