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Liver and Onions

A dish of liver sautéed with onions, seasoned with salt, pepper, and hot ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Liver and Onions

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into small square pieces.

  2. Pour boiling water over the liver, then drain and dredge with flour.

Cook

  1. In a hot frying pan, melt a good-sized piece of butter and add the sliced onions.

  2. Place the liver on top of the onions, season with salt and pepper, and cover.

  3. Cook slowly until the onions are tender, then remove the cover and brown the liver.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of hot ketchup just 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish and browns to a savoury, meaty flavour.
Flour
Coats the liver pieces so they brown in the pan and develop a light crust.
Onions
Soften slowly in the butter, adding sweetness as their sugars caramelise.
Butter
Carries heat and adds richness while the onions cook and the liver browns.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the onions are tender. Cooking the onions gently lets their sugars break down and sweeten slowly without scorching. Covering the pan traps steam, so the onions soften before the liver is browned, which keeps the liver from drying out or toughening.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, butter, pepper, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, butter, pepper, ketchup. 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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