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Liver Soup

A soup made with bacon, calf's liver, vegetables, herbs, rice, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Liver Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon into small pieces.

  2. Dissolve the bacon in a stewpan.

  3. Cut the liver into small squares.

  4. Cut the vegetables into small squares.

Cook

  1. Fry the liver and vegetables with the herbs and peppercorns briskly for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the stock, rice, and seasoning.

  3. Cook very slowly for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  4. Remove the parsley and thyme before serving.

  5. Strain the soup through a wire sieve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the soup and gives it its rich, meaty flavour.
Rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks slowly, giving it body.
Bacon fat
Adds fat for frying, carrying flavour into the vegetables and liver.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens and browns in the fat.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the soup as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook very slowly for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the liver tender and the stock clear. Boiling hard toughens the liver proteins and can cloud the soup, and rice can settle and scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, carrot, parsley, turnip, thyme, rice. 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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