Skip to main content
Main

Hashed Liver

A dish of boiled liver mixed with mashed egg yolks and finely chopped egg whites, seasoned with spices and optional wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hashed Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the liver until tender.

  2. Chop the hard boiled eggs: mash the yolks smooth and chop the whites finely.

Make the gravy

  1. Combine the chopped eggs with the liver in a pot with enough boiling water to make gravy.

  2. Bring to a boil over medium heat.

  3. In a separate bowl, rub the flour into the butter until well combined.

  4. Stir the butter mixture into the liver mixture.

  5. Season with salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, allspice, and cloves to taste.

  6. Add wine if desired for extra flavor.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 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
Provides the main body and rich flavor of the dish.
Hard boiled eggs
Mashed yolks and chopped whites thicken the gravy and add texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the gravy.
Flour
Rubbed into the butter, it thickens the gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the liver mixture. Flour rubbed into butter must be fully combined and stirred in gently so it disperses without lumps. Keeping the mixture at a boil while stirring lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the gravy smoothly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, egg, butter, flour, pepper, clove, wine. 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.

You might also like

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