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Baked Calf's Liver

A baked calf liver served with macaroni and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Baked Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and bake

  1. Lard the calf's liver with fat pork.

  2. Place it in an iron pan with 1 pint of water or veal stock.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes, basting frequently.

Serve

  1. Prepare macaroni boiled in milk and water.

  2. Once the liver is done, dish it and arrange the macaroni around it.

  3. In the gravy, add an egg-sized piece of butter, a little flour, pepper, salt, and soy sauce.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil and pour it over the liver before serving 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. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in liquid so it stays moist.
Fat pork
Larding adds fat that bastes the liver and keeps its lean flesh moist as it bakes.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat, adding richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the pan gravy so it coats the liver and macaroni.

The step that matters

Basting the liver during the 45-minute bake. Liver is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Frequent basting with the pan liquid keeps the surface moist and the interior tender.

“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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