Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of thinly sliced calf liver sautéed with bacon, flour, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon and liver into thin slices.

Cook

  1. Place the bacon in a chafing dish and cook until the fat is rendered.

  2. Move the bacon to one side of the dish.

  3. Roll the liver in flour and season with pepper.

  4. Add the liver to the dish and cook until brown and tender, turning often.

  5. Serve a slice of bacon with each piece of liver.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

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

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Main protein; cooking it until just tender keeps it soft rather than tough.
Flour
Coats the liver so it browns in the fat and gives a light crust.
Bacon
Renders fat for cooking the liver and adds salty, smoky flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the liver until brown and tender, turning often. Calf's liver is lean and cooks quickly; overcooking makes it dry and tough. Turning often browns it evenly without drying the surface too much.

“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.

More calf liver and bacon recipes

Fried 3 See all 25 →

You might also like

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