Name: Stewed Liver and Bacon
Ingredients: 1 lb liver; ½ lb bacon; 1½ cups water; 1 oz flour; 1 tablespoon mushroom ketchup; 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the liver and cut it into small, thin pieces.
Roll the liver pieces in flour, pepper, and salt.

Cook

Cook the bacon in a frying pan until done, then remove it.
In the bacon fat, quickly brown the liver pieces.
Add water, mushroom ketchup, and Worcestershire sauce to the pan.
Simmer until the liver is cooked through.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,435 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Liver + mushroomtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together572 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver: Provides the main body of the dish, becoming tender when cooked through briefly.
Bacon: Its fat browns the liver pieces and adds savory, smoky flavor to the sauce.
Flour: Coats the liver pieces and thickens the cooking liquid as it simmers.
Mushroom ketchup: Adds deep, savory umami flavor to the stewing liquid.
Worcestershire sauce: Adds tangy, savory depth that rounds out the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Quickly brown the liver pieces. Liver is thin and cooks fast, so a short, hot browning keeps it tender. Overcooking makes it firm and grainy, and too much time in the pan toughens it.

“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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Stewed Liver and Bacon