Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Liver a LA Jardiniere

A braised calf liver cooked with vegetables, paprika, and a thickened gravy, served with sliced tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Calf's Liver a LA Jardiniere

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver.

  2. Dry the liver with a soft cloth.

  3. Lard the liver with strips of fat salt pork, spaced ½ inch apart.

  4. Place the liver on a bed of vegetables: carrot, turnip, peas or beans, onion, and parsley.

  5. Dust the liver with paprika.

  6. Cover the liver with boiling water or weak stock.

Braise

  1. Cover tightly and cook for 1 hour.

  2. Add the sliced tomatoes.

  3. Cook for an additional 40 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the liver.

  2. Keep the liver hot over boiling water with the drained vegetables.

  3. Strain the gravy left in the pan.

  4. Thicken the gravy with browned flour.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Add the lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour some gravy over the liver.

  2. Serve the remaining gravy in a separate dish.

  3. Carve the liver horizontally.

  4. Serve with the vegetables.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow moist cooking.
Salt pork fat
Larding adds fat and flavour that keeps the lean liver moist during braising.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the braising liquid, shaping the flavour of the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the strained gravy and adds a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the fattiness.

The step that matters

Cook tightly covered, with the liver kept hot. Liver is lean and overcooks quickly, turning dry and grainy. Gentle moist heat under a tight lid keeps the proteins tender, so the liver should be held hot rather than boiled again.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, carrot, turnip, onion, parsley, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes