Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Liver

A pan‑fried calf liver seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, served with a hot water reduction.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the calf's liver in cold water and dry it.

  2. Cut the liver into slices ½ inch thick.

  3. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the slices and dredge them with flour.

Cook

  1. Heat a skillet with butter and lard until hot enough to brown.

  2. Place the liver in the skillet, flour side down.

  3. Sprinkle the other side of the liver with salt, pepper, and flour.

  4. Cover the skillet and cook slowly for 10 minutes.

  5. Turn the liver and cook for another 10 minutes.

  6. Transfer the liver to a warm chafing dish.

Make the pan sauce

  1. Add hot water to the skillet.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, stirring well.

  3. Add more salt and pepper to taste.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gently to stay tender inside while the outside browns.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the pan and help thicken the liquid that follows.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the skillet and helps the surface brown.
Lard
Adds fat with a high heat tolerance, so the skillet gets hot enough to brown the liver.

The step that matters

Cook slowly with the lid on. Liver cooks quickly and turns dry and tough if overcooked. Gentle covered heat cooks the centre through while keeping the slices moist, so the browning stays on the surface.

“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.

More calf liver recipes

and Bacon 25Fried 14Roasted 14with Bacon 12Stewed 11Baked 10 See all 21 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes