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Curried Liver

A liver dish cooked with butter, onions, curry powder, and stock, served over boiled rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into small pieces.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter until hot.

  3. Add the liver and cook slowly for 4 minutes.

Make the curry

  1. Stir in the flour, onions, cayenne, salt, pepper, and curry powder; cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the stock and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled rice.

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 + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Liver
Provides the main protein and rich flavour that the sauce is built around.
Butter
Carries heat into the liver and adds richness and a rounded flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the fat.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften and brown slightly.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm spice aroma that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the liver slowly. Liver turns grainy and tough when cooked too hot or too long, because its proteins tighten quickly. Gentle heat keeps it tender and moist while it cooks through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, pepper, rice. 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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