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Curried Liver

A quick pan‑fried liver dish flavored with curry powder, cayenne, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Liver

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the liver into small, thin pieces.

  2. In a frying pan, heat the butter.

  3. Cook the liver in the butter slowly for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the flour, cayenne, salt, pepper, and curry powder.

  5. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring well, then 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the butter.
Butter
Carries the heat and fat that cook the liver and carry the spices.
Flour
Thickens the cooking fat and juices into a slightly thickened coating.
Curry powder
Adds warm, earthy spice aroma that flavours the fat and liver.

The step that matters

Cook the liver slowly in the butter. Liver turns firm and grainy when it is overcooked at high heat. Gentle cooking keeps the pieces tender and moist, and the short final cooking should not go on long enough to toughen them.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, 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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