Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked with bacon, seasoned, and finished in a lemon butter sauce.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  2. Match the number of bacon slices to the liver slices.

  3. Fry the bacon until crispy.

  4. Place the crispy bacon on a hot dish.

Fry the liver

  1. In the bacon fat, fry the liver.

  2. Season the liver with pepper and salt.

  3. Lightly dredge the liver with flour.

  4. Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning.

  5. When done, arrange the liver around the dish with a slice of bacon between each.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off excess bacon fat.

  2. Add butter to the remaining fat.

  3. Dredge the butter in flour.

  4. Stir in lemon juice and water.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  6. Pour the sauce into the center of the dish.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Calf's liver
Main protein, cooked quickly so it stays tender and browns on the outside.
Bacon
Renders fat for frying the liver and adds salty, savory flavor.
Flour
Light coating that browns in the fat and thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the pan sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon fat.

The step that matters

Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning. Thin liver slices cook fast, and the flour coating and sugars in the pan can scorch before the centre is done. Turning them regularly lets heat reach evenly and gives a golden, not burnt, crust.

“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.

More calf liver and bacon recipes

Fried 3 See all 25 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes