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Liver Rolls

Liver rolls are liver slices rolled with fat salt pork, browned and simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Liver Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Pour boiling water over the liver slices and let them stand for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin from the liver slices and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Place a small piece of fat salt pork on each slice and roll them up, securing with string.

Cook and serve

  1. Brown the rolls in drippings or butter in a skillet.

  2. Add flour to the skillet and stir to combine.

  3. Cover the rolls with water and season more if necessary.

  4. Cook for 1 hour, then remove the strings and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Liver
Forms the main body of the rolls and gives them their rich, savory flavor.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean liver moist as it cooks.
Drippings or butter
Browns the rolls in the skillet, building color and savory flavor.
Flour
Stirred into the skillet to help thicken the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Brown the rolls before adding water. Browning in fat develops color and flavor through the Maillard reaction, which water-added stewing alone cannot produce. Searing first also helps the rolls hold their shape.

“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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