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Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced sheep's liver fried with bacon and coated in flour, finished with a thickened flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,420 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon

  1. Cut the bacon into thin slices and remove the rind from each slice.

  2. Fry the bacon in a frying pan for about 10 minutes, adding a small piece of dripping if the bacon is not very fat.

  3. Turn the bacon when one side is fried.

  4. Once the bacon is cooked, remove it from the pan and keep it warm on a dish.

Cook the liver

  1. Slice the sheep's liver into pieces.

  2. Coat the liver slices in flour on both sides.

  3. Fry the liver slices in the same pan, a few at a time, ensuring they do not overlap.

  4. If desired, fry sliced onion with the liver.

  5. Cook the liver for about 15 minutes, turning occasionally until it is brown inside.

  6. Once cooked, place the liver on the dish with the bacon.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with nearly ½ cup of water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Pour the flour mixture into the frying pan, stirring until it boils and thickens.

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. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, brown texture when fried.
Bacon
Releases fat into the pan that cooks the liver and adds salty, savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the liver to help it brown and thickens the pan juices into a gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the liver a few at a time without overlapping. Crowding the pan lowers its temperature, so the liver steams and turns grey instead of browning. Frying in small batches keeps the surface hot enough to brown well.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour. 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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