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Liver Balls

Liver balls are fried balls made from grated liver, crackers, onion, eggs, and fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the liver a day before making the balls.

  2. Soak the crackers in water, then drain them well.

Make the mixture

  1. In a frying pan, heat the fat and add the grated onion, salt, and pepper. Stir the mixture over heat until dry, then cool in a bowl.

  2. Combine the cooled cracker mixture with the grated liver, eggs, salt, pepper, and enough fat to keep the mixture moist.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into balls and fry in hot drippings until browned.

  2. Drain on a hot sieve for a few 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Pepper + livertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Liver + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,177 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Crackers
Soaked and drained, they bind the mixture and give the balls body.
Calf's liver
Provides the main flavor and the savory, meaty base of the balls.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Fat
Keeps the mixture moist and carries flavor into the balls during frying.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma once cooked down in the fat.

The step that matters

Stir the onion mixture until dry. If the onion and seasoning stay wet, the cracker mixture becomes too soft to bind, and the balls may fall apart when formed and fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, liver, 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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