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Stewed Liver

A dish of tender calf liver simmered with butter, browned flour, spices, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the liver until tender, then chop it finely.

Stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped liver with a little water, butter, browned flour, and spices.

  2. Simmer for twenty minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, pouring over it ½ cup of wine.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Liver + winetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender when boiled and then stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, moist mouthfeel to the stewed mixture.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce when poured over it.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for twenty minutes. Simmering slowly keeps the liver tender and lets the flour thicken the liquid evenly. Boiling hard can toughen the meat and make the sauce lumpy or uneven.

“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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