Name: With Bacon
Ingredients: liver; salt; bacon; pepper; browned flour; boiling water

Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

With Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Pour salted boiling water over the liver and let it stand for a few minutes, then drain and slice.
Crisp thin slices of bacon in a hot frying pan and lay them neatly around the edge of a platter or deep dish, keeping the dish hot.
Fry the liver in the drippings from the bacon and place it in the middle of the dish.
Pour a little boiling water into the frying pan, season with pepper and salt, thicken with browned flour, and pour over the liver or serve separately.

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.

Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,418 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).