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Stuffed Calf's Liver

A liver stuffed with bread crumbs, ham, mushrooms, capers, parsley, onion juice, and egg, then simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stuffed Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver and soak it in cold water for 30 minutes. Wipe it dry.

  2. Make a slit in one side of the liver, leaving an inch uncut on the opposite side. Use a knife to create a pocket inside the liver for the stuffing.

Stuff and wrap

  1. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, chopped ham or pork, chopped mushrooms, capers, pepper, salt, parsley, and onion juice. Bind with the raw egg.

  2. Stuff the liver with the mixture and sew up the opening.

  3. Wrap the liver in cheesecloth or mosquito netting, fitting it closely.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the wrapped liver in a saucepan on a bed of chopped carrot, onion, and tomato.

  2. Cover with hot water or stock and cook in a covered pot for 1.5 hours.

  3. Let the liver cool in the cooking liquid, then place it between two plates with a weight on top to firm up.

  4. When ready to serve, remove the cloth and slice the liver thinly.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked whole, then sliced for serving.
Raw egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the liver during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the stuffing hold its shape rather than turning loose.
Ham or pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Wrap the liver closely before cooking. Fitting the cloth snugly keeps the stuffing packed inside the liver, so the filling stays in place and the slices hold together when cut.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, bread, ham, mushroom, capers, 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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