Name: Calf's Liver Fried
Ingredients: calf's liver, sliced; good beef dripping or butter; toasted bacon; parsley; salt; pepper

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Calf's Liver Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the beef dripping or butter in a pan until boiling.
Add the sliced calf's liver to the pan when it stops hissing.
Fry until cooked through, then remove from heat.
Prepare the toasted bacon by soaking it in boiling water to remove salt and tenderize it.
Serve the liver with the bacon arranged around it and garnish with crisped parsley.
Drizzle melted butter over the liver and serve the rest in a sauceboat.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,866 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Liver + beeftop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together431 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).