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Chicken Livers with Curry

A fried chicken liver dish coated in breadcrumbs and served with a curry-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Livers with Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Clean and separate the chicken livers.

  2. Dip the livers in seasoned breadcrumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in breadcrumbs.

Cook the livers and sauce

  1. Sauté the livers in butter until cooked through, then remove them from the pan.

  2. In the same pan, add 2 tablespoons of butter and the chopped onion; cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Mix the flour with curry powder, salt and paprika, then add to the pan.

  4. Strain the sauce over the cooked livers 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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour 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

Chicken livers
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender texture when sautéed through.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the livers while frying.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a sauce that coats the livers.
Butter
Cooks the livers and onion and adds richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Sautéing the coated livers until cooked through. Livers turn grainy and dry when overcooked, while undercooked livers are unsafe to eat. Holding them at a steady heat until just cooked through keeps them tender and safe.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, egg, butter, flour. 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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