Skip to main content
Main

Sheep's Liver, Fried

Fried slices of sheep's liver served with a stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sheep's Liver, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak the liver and cut it into slices ⅓ inch thick.

  2. Dry each slice thoroughly with a soft cloth.

  3. Flour the slices well and sprinkle with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

Fry the liver

  1. Heat dripping in a frying pan and add the liver slices.

  2. Fry gently until tender, turning occasionally for even cooking.

  3. Once cooked, lift the liver onto a hot dish and pour off excess fat from the pan.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Mix flour with a little cold water, then add boiling stock or water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan and stir briskly until it boils.

  3. Add browning sauce, store sauce, and additional pepper and salt.

  4. Let it boil for 1-2 minutes, then strain over the liver.

  5. Serve very hot, optionally topped with fried onion.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's liver
Is the main dish, cooked through and turned tender by gentle frying.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown lightly and later thickens the gravy.
Dripping or oil
Conducts heat in the pan and gives the slices a fried surface and flavour.
Stock or water
Forms the liquid base of the gravy that thickens as it boils.
Browning sauce
Adds colour and savoury depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry gently until tender. Liver is lean and cooks quickly; high heat or overcooking toughens its proteins and makes it dry and grainy, so gentle heat and careful timing keep it tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, pepper, parsley, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes