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Liver Stewed in Madeira Wine

A dish of calf's liver stewed with Madeira wine, mushroom sauce, butter, lemon juice, and served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Liver Stewed in Madeira Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into pieces and clean well with a cloth.

Cook

  1. Fry the liver in a pan with 2 tablespoons of butter over high heat for 5 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add ½ cup of Madeira wine and reduce for 1 minute.

  4. Pour in ½ pint of mushroom sauce and cook for 3 minutes.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and the juice of ½ lemon, tossing well without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with heart-shaped pieces of fried bread.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to stay tender.
Madeira wine
Reduces to a concentrated, slightly sweet flavour that deglazes the pan.
Mushroom sauce
Supplies moisture and savoury depth to coat the liver.
Butter
Adds fat for frying and a rich finish that gives the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and wine sauce.

The step that matters

Add the butter and lemon juice without boiling. Butter is an emulsifier that thickens and enriches a sauce, but if it boils the emulsion can break and turn greasy. Tossing gently off the heat or at low heat keeps the sauce smooth and the lemon flavour fresh.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, sauce, bread):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, pepper, madeira wine, mushroom, sauce, bread. 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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