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To Cook Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced sheep's liver fried with bacon and finished with a flour‑water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,420 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

To Cook Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bacon and liver

  1. Cut the bacon into thin slices and remove the rind.

  2. Fry the bacon in a frying pan for about 10 minutes, adding dripping if it's not very fat.

  3. Turn the bacon when one side is fried.

  4. Slice the sheep's liver into pieces.

  5. Dip the liver slices in flour, coating both sides.

  6. Remove the bacon from the pan and keep it warm.

Cook the liver

  1. Fry the liver slices in the pan, a few at a time, without stacking them.

  2. If desired, fry sliced onion with the liver.

  3. Cook the liver for about 15 minutes, turning it once.

  4. Check doneness by cutting a slice; it should be brown inside.

  5. Place the cooked liver on the dish with the bacon.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix 2 teaspoons of flour with nearly ½ cup of water to make a smooth paste.

  2. Pour the flour mixture into the frying pan, stirring until it boils and thickens.

  3. Pour the sauce over the liver and bacon.

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. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 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

Sheep's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until firm and browned through.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the pan and crisps at the edges.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the pan sauce into a smooth gravy.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma when fried alongside the liver.

The step that matters

Checking liver doneness. Liver turns tough and grainy when overcooked, so checking a cut slice for brown colour inside, rather than relying on time alone, helps keep it tender.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour. 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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