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Liver Hash

A dish of cooked liver simmered in a butter‑flour sauce with water, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Liver Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into pieces the size of a penny and measure after cutting.

  2. Heat the butter in a pan.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour and cook until brown.

  2. Gradually add the cold water, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Place the liver in the sauce and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the lemon juice and serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked liver
Forms the main body of the hash, supplying the meaty bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cold water into a sauce once it has cooked with the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cold water. Adding cold liquid slowly to the hot flour and butter mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth sauce.

“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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