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Liver Dumplings for Soup

Liver dumplings made from finely chopped calf liver, eggs, bread crumbs, and spices, boiled in soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Liver Dumplings for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Remove skin and tough fiber from the calf's liver and chop it very fine.

Shape the dumplings

  1. Add salt, grated garlic, butter, pepper, mace, marjoram, and beaten eggs to the liver.

  2. Mix in enough grated stale bread crumbs to form a stiff mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into balls the size of a nutmeg.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the dumplings into boiling soup and cook for 15 minutes before serving.

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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Garlic + marjoramtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Provides the main body and rich flavor of the dumplings.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the dumplings hold their shape.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture a stiff, shapeable texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender bite.

The step that matters

Forming a stiff mixture. If the bread crumbs are added in too small an amount, the mixture stays loose and the dumplings may fall apart in the boiling soup. Enough crumbs absorb the liquid from the eggs and liver so the balls hold their shape during cooking.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, clove, garlic, butter, pepper, marjoram, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, clove, garlic, butter, pepper, marjoram, egg. 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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