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Stewed Calf's Liver

A stew of sliced calf liver cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, thyme, peppercorns, and stock, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lightly fry the bacon slices in a stewpan until crisp, then remove and set aside.

  2. Cut the liver into ½-inch thick slices, dip them in flour, and fry in the bacon fat until slightly browned on each side.

Stew

  1. Remove from heat, add the stock, diced vegetables, parsley, thyme, and peppercorns, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stew gently for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Arrange the liver on a serving dish, garnish with the cooked vegetables and bacon, and serve with boiled rice.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Is the main protein, cooked gently so it stays tender and moist in the stew.
Bacon
Adds savory, smoky fat for frying the liver and flavour to the finished dish.
Flour
Dusting the liver forms a light coating that helps it brown and thickens the sauce slightly.
Onion
Softens during stewing and adds sweetness and savoury depth to the liquid.
Carrot
Releases natural sweetness into the stewing liquid as it cooks slowly.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently moistens and flavours the liver and vegetables.

The step that matters

Frying the floured liver. Liver cooks quickly and turns firm and dry if overcooked. A light, brief browning seals the surface and keeps the inside tender before it simmers gently.

Swap the onion

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

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

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