Skip to main content
Main

Braised Liver

Braised liver cooked with onions, mushrooms, parsley, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Braised Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the liver with the salt pork.

  2. Melt the butter in a small iron pot with a tight cover.

Braise

  1. Add the onions, mushrooms, parsley, and lemon to the pot.

  2. Place the liver in the pot and cover tightly to prevent steam from escaping.

  3. Cook for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the liver from the pot, strain the gravy, and pour it over the 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + porktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main dish; the long, covered braise makes it tender.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the lean liver as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the pot before the braise.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they braise, flavouring the gravy.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour into the gravy.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty gravy.

The step that matters

Cover the pot tightly for the full 2 hours. Liver is lean and toughens and dries if it cooks in open steam. A tight lid traps moisture so the braise stays juicy and the gravy stays concentrated.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, mushroom, parsley, butter, pork):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, mushroom, parsley, butter, pork. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes