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Calf's Liver with Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked in bacon fat, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, served with crispy bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf's Liver with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Cover the liver slices with boiling water.

  3. Let the covered liver stand for 5 minutes.

  4. Drain the liver slices.

  5. Wipe the liver slices dry.

Season and coat

  1. Dip each slice in bacon fat.

  2. Sprinkle the liver slices with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Dredge the seasoned slices lightly with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Pan-broil the bacon until crispy.

  2. Sauté the liver slices in hot bacon fat until delicately browned.

  3. Turn the liver slices and brown evenly.

  4. Serve with the crispy bacon.

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 + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooked to a tender interior with a browned surface.
Bacon
Supplies the fat for cooking the liver and the crispy bacon served alongside.
All-purpose flour
Forms a light coating that helps the liver brown evenly and gives a delicate crust.

The step that matters

Sauté the liver slices in hot bacon fat. Liver overcooks quickly and turns firm and grainy. Hot fat browns the flour coating fast, so the slices should be cooked briefly and turned once to keep the interior tender.

“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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