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Calf's Liver and Bacon

Sliced calf liver cooked slowly with bacon, onion, and a tomato‑flavored gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver well and cut it into long, narrow slices.

  2. Dip each slice in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

Cook

  1. Melt the dripping in a saucepan and lay the liver slices in it, fitting them neatly together.

  2. Strew the liver with sliced onion and cover entirely with thin slices of bacon.

  3. Cover the saucepan tightly and cook very slowly for one hour without allowing it to bubble.

  4. Once tender, remove the liver and place it on a dish.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add tomato sauce to the gravy, thicken with browned flour mixed with water, boil once, and pour 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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender.
Flour
Coats the slices, helping them brown and giving the gravy body when thickened.
Bacon
Covers the liver and adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the slices as they cook.
Onion
Sweetens and flavours the liver as it cooks slowly in the covered pan.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and sweetness to the gravy, giving it colour and tang.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly without bubbling. Gentle, covered heat keeps the liver tender and moist. A rapid boil toughens its proteins and dries the slices, so the lid should stay on and the heat low.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, pepper, pork, tomato, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, pepper, pork, tomato, sauce. 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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