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Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver fried in bacon fat, served with a lemony gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Dip each slice of liver in flour.

  2. Fry the liver in bacon fat for about 8 minutes, using 1 slice of bacon for each slice of liver.

  3. Remove the liver and bacon from the pan and cover to keep warm.

Make the gravy

  1. Drain excess fat from the pan and sprinkle in 1 tablespoon of flour.

  2. Rub the flour into the pan with the back of a spoon.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of water, add pepper, coarse sea salt, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

  4. If needed, add a few drops of burnt sugar.

  5. Boil for 5 minutes, then strain the gravy over the liver and bacon.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to stay tender inside.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the pan drippings into gravy.
Bacon fat
Fries the liver and adds savory, smoky flavor to the dish.
Bacon slices
Add salty, smoky flavor and fat alongside the liver.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the liver for about 8 minutes. Liver is lean and dense, so overcooking makes it tough and grainy. Cooking it just until done keeps it tender and moist inside.

“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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