Skip to main content
Main

Devilled Liver

A cooked liver mixture with salt pork, bread crumbs, and spices, baked in a covered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Devilled Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the liver and salt pork very fine.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, mace, and cloves, mixing well.

Cook and finish

  1. Put the mixture into a covered mold and place it in a saucepan of cold water.

  2. Cover and cook on the fire for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the mold, uncover it, and let it stand in an open oven to release steam.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the main body of the loaf, giving it its rich, dense texture.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist during long cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture so it holds together when sliced.

The step that matters

Cooking in a covered mold in water. Cooking gently in a covered mold over water heats the mixture slowly and evenly, so it sets firm without drying out or becoming rubbery. Keeping the mold covered traps moisture for the full two hours.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, bread, pepper, clove. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes