Skip to main content
Main

Liver and Onions

A dish of sautéed liver and onions cooked in butter with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Liver and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into small pieces, about ½ inch square.

  2. Pour boiling water over the liver, then drain the liver.

  3. Dredge the liver with flour.

Cook the onions and liver

  1. Melt the butter in a hot frying pan.

  2. Add the sliced onions.

  3. Place the liver on top of the onions.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Cover and cook slowly until the onions are tender.

  6. Remove the cover.

  7. Brown the liver and onions.

  8. Add the hot ketchup just before serving.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main protein and rich flavour, and browns to a savoury crust when fried.
Onions
Soften during slow cooking to become sweet and add bulk to the dish.
Butter
Conducts heat in the hot pan and adds richness and browning.
Flour
Coats the liver so it browns better and the surface stays slightly crisp.

The step that matters

Cover and cook slowly until the onions are tender. Gentle heat under a lid softens the onions and cooks the liver through while it stays moist. Cooking too fast or too hot can toughen the liver and leave the onions raw or scorched.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, flour, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, pepper, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes