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Braised Liver

Braised liver cooked with vegetables, stock, and a sauce of butter, flour, Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Use a calf's or lamb's liver.

  2. Coat the liver with lard in two or three layers.

  3. Dice one carrot, one turnip, one onion, a stalk of celery, and the bits left from the lardoons of salt pork; put them in a baking pan, and on this bed of vegetables place the larded liver.

Braise

  1. Add two cupfuls of stock or hot water, and a bouquet of one sprig of parsley, one bay leaf, and two cloves.

  2. Cover with another pan, and cook in a moderate oven for two hours; baste occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Serve with the vegetables from the pan, on the same dish, placed around the liver.

  2. Pour over the liver a sauce made as follows: Put in a saucepan one tablespoonful of butter; when melted, add one tablespoonful of flour, and stir until browned; then add slowly the strained liquor from the pan.

  3. If there is not enough to make one cupful, add water to make that quantity.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and add, if convenient, one tablespoonful each of Worcestershire sauce and mushroom catsup.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

689Calories
18 gProtein
13 gFat
124 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 11 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Turnip1 medium (122g)34
Carrot1 medium (61g)25
Soy Sauce1 tbsp (15ml)9
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Celery1 stalk (40g)6
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver (in the method)
Forms the dense, meaty centre of the dish, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Lard (in the method)
Coats the liver in fat, adding richness and helping keep the surface moist during baking.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that keeps the liver moist and builds the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and pan liquor into a smooth sauce as it cooks and browns.
Butter
Carries the flour for the roux and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Stirring the flour in melted butter until browned cooks out its raw taste and builds a nutty colour and flavour. Adding liquid too early, or stopping too soon, leaves the sauce pale and floury tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, flour, sauce, celery, carrot, turnip):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, flour, sauce, celery, carrot, turnip. 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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