Name: Bacon and Calf's Liver
Ingredients: 4 slices of bacon; 1 pound calf's liver; ¼ cup flour; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; water

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 ↓

Bacon and Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the bacon and liver

Fry the bacon in a pan until crispy, then remove and keep warm.
Cut the calf's liver into thin slices, then coat with flour and pepper.
In the same pan with the bacon fat, cook the liver, turning frequently until done.
Place a slice of bacon on each slice of liver.

Make the gravy

To make gravy, pour off excess fat, add a little flour, and enough water for desired consistency.
Stir in lemon juice, boil, and pour over the liver and bacon.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Liver + lemontop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together768 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver: Provides the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender texture when turned in the pan.
Bacon: Adds salty, savory fat that flavors the liver and crisps on top.
Flour: Coats the liver for light browning and thickens the pan fat into gravy.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the liver until done. Liver is thin and cooks quickly; overcooking makes it dry and tough, so turn it frequently and remove it once it is just cooked through.

Swap the lemon

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

Limefits about as well
Lemonthe original
Cherryfits less well
Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, pepper. 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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Bacon and Calf's Liver