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Liver Soup

A hearty soup made with stock, ham, onion, liver, and optional heart, bacon, egg, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Liver Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil ham and onion in water until reduced by half.

  2. Chop left-over liver and ham finely, then add to the stock.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken with brown roux.

Serve

  1. Pour over croutons in a tureen.

  2. If available, add minced heart, bacon, and egg for extra flavor.

  3. Garnish with minced parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Corned ham
Gives the broth its salty, savory flavor as it simmers with the onion.
Liver
Adds the main body and rich, meaty flavor to the soup once chopped finely.
Brown roux
Thickens the broth so it has a fuller body and coats the croutons.
Croutons
Soak up the broth in the tureen, giving the soup a soft, bread-based texture.

The step that matters

Thicken with brown roux. Roux is flour cooked in fat; it must be stirred into the hot liquid gradually so it dissolves without lumps and thickens evenly, and it should be added after the broth has simmered and reduced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, liver, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, liver, egg, pepper, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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