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Calf's Liver a LA Terrapin

A dish of diced calf's liver cooked in a sauce of butter, flour, milk, egg, and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Calf's Liver a LA Terrapin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver, dry it, and cut it into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils.

  4. Add the liver and seasoning, and heat well.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg and Madeira.

Serve

  1. Serve piping hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened with the flour and butter roux.
Butter
Fat that starts the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Egg
Stirred in off the heat to enrich and lightly thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at higher temperatures and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is still boiling. Removing it from heat first keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

“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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