Name: Calf's Liver Larded
Ingredients: fat salt pork; calf's liver; carrot; turnip; onion; butter

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Calf's Liver Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the liver in cold water and trim off loose pieces, but leave the skin intact.
Use a larding needle to insert strips of fat salt pork (lardoons) into the liver's surface.
Place the liver on a bed of pork scraps, carrot, turnip, and onion in a baking pan.
Cover with buttered paper and bake until nearly done, then remove the paper to brown the lardoons.
Rub the vegetables through a sieve and use the drippings from the pan to make a sauce or gravy.

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.

Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, liver, turnip, onion, butter):

Leekfits better
Potatofits better
Chivefits better
Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, liver, turnip, onion, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.