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Calf's Liver a L'anglaise

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked in butter, pork fat, onion, parsley, and pepper, finished with a browned flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 a L'anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Put the butter into a warm saucepan.

  2. Cut the liver into slices ½ inch thick.

  3. Lay the sliced liver in the butter.

  4. Mince the pork.

  5. Cover the liver with the minced pork.

  6. Sprinkle the parsley, onion, and pepper on top.

  7. Cover the saucepan tightly.

Cook in water bath

  1. Place the saucepan in a kettle of hot water.

  2. Keep the water below boiling for 1 hour.

  3. Let the water boil for another hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the liver.

  2. Place the liver on a chafing dish to keep warm.

  3. Boil the remaining liquid and thicken it with browned flour.

  4. Pour the sauce over the liver and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender with gentle, slow cooking.
Fat salt pork
Bastes the liver with melting fat and adds savory flavor to the pan liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the liver brown lightly and carries flavor.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the cooking liquid.
Browned flour (in the method)
Thickens the remaining cooking liquid into a smooth sauce and adds a toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Keeping the water below boiling. Holding the water just under a boil cooks the liver gently and keeps it tender. A rolling boil toughens proteins and makes the liver dry and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, butter, parsley, pepper. 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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