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Chicken or Goose Liver Canape

A canapé of cooked chicken or goose livers spread on toasted bread, topped with bacon and optional peppers or parsley, garnished with radish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken or Goose Liver Canape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Boil or sauté the livers until cooked through.

  2. Mash or rice the cooked livers.

Assemble the canapés

  1. Chop the crispy fried bacon and moisten it with creamed butter or other fat.

  2. Spread the bacon mixture on the toasted bread pieces.

  3. Sprinkle with bits of red or green peppers or chopped parsley.

  4. Garnish the plate with a red radish or a sprig of parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + radishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + radishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together382 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken or goose livers
Form the smooth, savoury base of the spread once cooked and mashed.
Crispy fried bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and a crisp contrast to the soft liver.
Creamed butter or other fat
Moistens the mixture and gives it a rich, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Cook the livers until cooked through. Livers that are undercooked can be unsafe to eat, while overcooking makes them dry and grainy. Cooking them just through keeps them safe and tender enough to mash into a spread.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, bread, pepper, radish):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, bread, pepper, radish. 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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