Name: Baltimore Liver Relish
Ingredients: 4 large chicken livers; 1 tablespoon minced broiled parsley; 3 hard boiled eggs; 1 teaspoon Bee Brand Onion Salt; 2 small cucumber pickles; ½ cup highly seasoned mayonnaise; ½ cup minced celery; Bee Brand Paprika to taste

Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baltimore Liver Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Run the chicken livers, parsley, hard boiled eggs, onion salt, cucumber pickles, and celery through a meat chopper.
Mix the chopped ingredients with the mayonnaise and season with paprika.
Serve on toasted crackers or use as a filling for sandwiches.

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.

Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,564 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,745 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Onion + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,050 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers: Provide the main savory body and rich, meaty flavor of the relish.
Hard boiled eggs: Add creamy texture and bulk to the chopped mixture.
Highly seasoned mayonnaise: Binds the chopped ingredients together and adds moisture and richness.
Cucumber pickles: Add acidity and a crisp, tangy contrast to the rich livers.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, parsley, egg, onion, celery):

Carrotfits better
Leekfits better
Chivefits better
Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, parsley, egg, onion, celery. 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.