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Liver Rolls

Liver rolls are bacon‑wrapped liver slices browned and simmered in a flour‑water sauce with onion and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Liver Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices, cover with boiling water, and let stand for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the tough skin and wipe the liver dry.

  3. Place one piece of bacon on each slice of liver, roll up, and fasten with a toothpick.

  4. Dredge the rolls with flour.

Brown and simmer

  1. Cook the remaining bacon in a frying pan until all the fat is rendered.

  2. Brown the liver rolls in the bacon fat.

  3. Place the rolls in a stew pan.

  4. Mix the flour with the fat in the pan, add 2 cups of water, salt, onion, and parsley.

  5. Pour the mixture over the rolls, cover, and simmer for one hour.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the main body of the rolls and gives a rich, dense texture when simmered.
Bacon
Wraps the liver and renders fat that browns the rolls and adds savory flavor.
Flour
Coats the rolls and thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it mixes with the fat.

The step that matters

Brown the liver rolls in the bacon fat. Browning creates flavor through the Maillard reaction, so the rolls need enough hot fat and room in the pan to color rather than steam.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, parsley. 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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