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Baked Liver

A baked dish of beef liver cooked with salt pork, vegetables, water, flour, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Baked Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cut the salt pork into thin slices and spread some on the bottom of a deep baking pan.

  3. Spread the chopped vegetables over the pork and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Place the liver on top of the vegetables and cover with the remaining pork.

  5. Add the water to the pan and bake in the oven.

Bake and make the gravy

  1. Baste every 15 minutes with the pan juices.

  2. After 1½ hours, mix the flour with a little cold water and add it along with the vinegar.

  3. Cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the liver to a serving dish.

  2. Pour the gravy over it. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Beef liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through slowly in the moist oven heat.
Salt pork
Melts as it bakes, adding fat and savory flavor to the liver and pan juices.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it bakes, adding aroma to the pan juices that become the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and gravy flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the pan. Flour mixed with cold water first stays lump-free when stirred in. Added dry or to hot liquid without this step, it clumps, leaving the gravy grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper, vinegar. 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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