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Baked Calf's Liver

A baked calf's liver served with macaroni and a soy‑flavored gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Bake the liver

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

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

  3. Bake for 45 minutes, basting frequently.

Prepare and serve

  1. Prepare macaroni by boiling it in milk and water.

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

  3. Add butter, a little flour, pepper, salt, and soy sauce to the gravy.

  4. Boil the gravy once and pour it over the dish.

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, cooking to a tender, meaty texture.
Fat pork
Larded into the liver, it adds fat and moisture that keeps the lean meat from drying out.
Water or veal stock
Creates steam and braising liquid in the pan, keeping the liver moist while it bakes.
Butter
Enriches the gravy, adding richness and smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the pan juices.

The step that matters

Bake for 45 minutes, basting frequently. Liver is lean and overcooks quickly, becoming dry and grainy. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist, and the fat pork and liquid in the pan help protect the meat from drying out.

“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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