Skip to main content
Main

Calf's Liver and Heart Hash

A hash made from boiled calf liver and heart with onions, butter, salt, pepper, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Calf's Liver and Heart Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meats

  1. Boil the liver and heart until tender.

  2. Chop the boiled liver, heart, and onions finely.

  3. Return the mixture to the cooking liquid.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add chopped parsley just before serving if desired.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Adds rich, savory flavor and a soft, hearty texture to the hash.
Calf's heart
Contributes dense, meaty texture that holds up through the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and moisture as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor at the end.

The step that matters

Simmer for 1 hour. A long, gentle simmer breaks down the connective tissue in the heart and softens the mixture so it becomes tender. Boiling hard instead can toughen the meat and make it dry.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, butter, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, butter, pepper. 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 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes