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Liver Broiled

Broiled liver served with a pork gravy, baked potatoes, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,798 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Liver Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  2. Pour boiling water over the liver and let it sit for 5 minutes.

  3. Wipe the liver dry and broil it over hot coals until it looks mealy when gashed.

Make the gravy

  1. While broiling, fry slices of salt pork until crisp, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Make a gravy by cooking flour in the fat from the pork and adding water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Trim the edges of the liver, cut it and the pork into dice, and serve in the gravy, salting to taste.

  2. Serve with baked potatoes and tomatoes.

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. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  2. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

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

  5. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main meat, which turns mealy and firm when broiled through.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat flavours the gravy and its crisp pieces add savoury richness.
Flour
Cooked in the pork fat, it thickens the water into a gravy.

The step that matters

Broiling the liver until mealy. Liver turns tough and dry if overcooked, so it should be checked by gashing and removed once it looks mealy rather than left until fully firm.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, flour, potato. 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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