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Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked with bacon, onions, and a tomato-based sauce.

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

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon and onion

  1. Fry the bacon in a skillet until it begins to curl, then add the sliced onion and cook for 3 more minutes.

  2. Remove the bacon and keep it warm on a hot plate.

  3. Strain out the onion and return the fat to the heat.

Cook the liver

  1. Once the fat is hot, add the liver slices that have been seasoned with salt, pepper, and rolled in flour.

  2. Cook slowly, turning frequently, until the liver is brown and tender.

  3. Transfer the liver to a hot platter and garnish with the bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Optionally, after removing the liver, add stock or boiling water to the fat, along with ketchup, chopped parsley, and browned flour.

  2. Boil while stirring, then pour the sauce over the liver.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Is the main protein, cooked slowly so it browns on the outside and stays tender inside.
Bacon
Its rendered fat cooks the liver and adds smoky, savoury flavour to the dish.
All-purpose flour
Coats the liver slices so they brown in the fat and form a light crust.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a deeper, nutty brown colour and flavour.
Onion
Softens in the bacon fat and adds sweetness and aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Cook the liver slowly, turning frequently. Liver is lean and can turn tough and dry if cooked too fast or too long. Gentle, frequent turning browns the surface evenly while the inside stays tender.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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