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How to Cook Bullock's or Any Other Liver

A simple pan-fried liver dish seasoned with flour, pepper, salt, and optional parsley and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

How to Cook Bullock's or Any Other Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the liver into pieces.

  2. Roll the slices in flour, pepper, and salt.

Cook

  1. Heat the butter, lard, or dripping in a pan.

  2. Fry the liver slices until cooked through.

  3. Add chopped parsley and sliced onions for seasoning, if desired.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 body of the dish, cooking to a firm, tender texture.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the fat and form a light crust.
Butter, lard, or dripping
Conducts heat to the liver and adds fat for browning and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Fry the liver slices until cooked through. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, while undercooked meat is unsafe. Cooking through in a hot pan, without crowding, gives a browned crust and a tender interior.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, pepper, butter, onion):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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