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Stewed Liver and Bacon

A stew of liver, bacon, onions, and stock seasoned with sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and sage work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 229 recipes. Both carry 1,8-cineol, which smells eucalyptus, camphor. The science ↓

Stewed Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into pieces, wash, and dry it.

Make the stew

  1. Fry the bacon in a stewpan until crispy, then remove it.

  2. Fry the sliced onions in the same pan until golden, then remove them.

  3. Fry the flour in the pan until golden brown.

  4. Add the stock to the pan and stir until boiling.

  5. Return the bacon, liver, and onions to the pan, and season to taste.

  6. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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 + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  2. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Liver
Provides the main meaty body and rich flavour of the stew.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the stock and the liver.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet during frying, adding depth to the stew.
Flour
Browned in the fat, then thickens the stock into a gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the liver and thickens with the flour.

The step that matters

Frying the flour until golden brown. Flour must cook in the hot fat long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken evenly. Stirring it in cold stock afterward can leave lumps, so the flour should be fully browned before the stock goes in.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, sage. 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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