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Chicken Livers on Toast

Chicken livers sautéed with Madeira and brown sauce, served on hot buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Livers on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the chicken livers with a damp cloth, then dry the livers.

  2. Cut each liver into quarters.

Cook

  1. In a skillet, brown the livers in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Dredge the livers with flour.

  3. Add Madeira and brown sauce.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the livers on slices of hot buttered toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Chicken livers (in the method)
Provide the main protein, which browns on the surface while staying tender inside.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and aroma, and its liquid lifts browned bits from the pan into the sauce.
Brown sauce
Supplies savory depth and body, thickening the liquid as it simmers with the livers.
Butter
Carries heat for browning and adds richness and a nutty aroma.
Flour
Dries the liver surface and helps it brown and thicken the pan liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the livers in butter. The livers must be dry and the pan hot enough to brown them. Wet or crowded livers steam instead of browning, which loses the deep flavor the sauce depends on.

“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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