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Hog-liver Paste

A preserved paste made from hog liver, pork fat, butter, flour, eggs, and spices, canned for preservation.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Hog-liver Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickening

  1. Chop the fat pork very fine.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour in a kettle over low heat. Thin the butter and flour mixture with milk to a soft gruel. Add the chopped fat to the mixture. Cook over low heat until the fat is mostly rendered.

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver. Remove the skin, veins, and membranes from the liver. Pass the liver through a meat grinder or scrape it finely. Strain the ground liver through a fine sieve.

Make the paste

  1. Gradually mix the warm thickening into the liver. Stir in the egg yolks, pepper, ground cloves, salt, grated onion, and beaten egg whites.

Can and process

  1. Fill cans, leaving some space at the top. Cap the cans. Exhaust the cans for 5 to 8 minutes. Process in 4-ounce glass jars for 40 minutes at 250°F (120°C). Process in No.1 flat tin cans for 45 minutes at 250°F (120°C).

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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
Forms the main body of the paste, giving it its rich flavor and smooth spreadable texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks and whites bind the paste and help it set firm when processed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the paste a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Combined with butter and milk, it forms a thickening that gives the paste body.
Fat pork
Adds fat and savory flavor, and its rendered fat keeps the paste moist.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing the warm thickening into the liver. Adding the hot thickening all at once can scramble the egg and curdle the mixture. Adding it slowly while stirring blends it into a smooth, even paste.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, egg, milk, liver, pork, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, milk, liver, pork, butter, flour. 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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