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Calves' Liver Baked

Baked calf liver seasoned with parsley, shallots, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, salt, sweet oil, and wrapped in bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Calves' Liver Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

  1. Lard the liver with bacon and place it in a covered dish for 3 to 4 hours.

  2. Season with parsley, shallots, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, salt, and sweet oil. Turn it several times.

Bake and serve

  1. Wrap the liver in thin slices of bacon or cold ham.

  2. Bake or roast for about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Add the yolk of an egg, minced onions, and chopped herbs to the gravy before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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 until tender and set through baking.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty flavour that keeps the lean liver moist while it bakes.
Sweet oil
Carries the seasonings and adds moisture during marinating and roasting.
Shallots
Add mild aromatic sweetness that deepens the flavour of the gravy.

The step that matters

Baking the wrapped liver. Liver is lean and turns dry, grainy and tough when overcooked. Baking for the full time without checking can overshoot doneness, so the liver should be cooked only until just set in the centre.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, parsley, thyme, 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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