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Salad

Chicken Liver Salad

A salad of boiled chicken livers mixed with bacon, olives, walnuts, lemon juice, served on lettuce or cress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Liver Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Boil the chicken livers in salted and peppered water until tender, using just enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Once tender, cool the livers and cut them into small pieces.

Mix and serve

  1. Mince the bacon and fry it until crisp.

  2. Mix the bacon with the liver cubes and the lemon juice.

  3. Add the halved olives and chopped walnuts to the mixture.

  4. Serve the salad on a bed of lettuce or cress.

  5. Garnish with minced parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the main body and tender texture of the salad.
Bacon
Adds savoury flavour and crisp texture when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon.
Stuffed olives
Add salty, briny bites that contrast the rich livers.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the livers gently. Using just enough water and keeping the livers from burning helps them cook evenly and stay tender. Overcooked liver becomes dry and grainy because its proteins tighten too far.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, liver, pepper, lemon, olive, lettuce, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, pepper, lemon, olive, lettuce, 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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