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Calf's Liver and Bacon

Sliced calf liver fried in bacon fat, served with bacon and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Pour hot water over the liver and let it sit for a few minutes to remove blood.

  2. Dry the liver with a cloth.

  3. Cut the bacon into thin slices.

  4. Season the liver with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Dredge the liver in flour.

Cook the bacon and liver

  1. Fry the bacon until crisp, then keep the bacon warm.

  2. Fry the liver in the bacon fat until browned.

  3. Serve each slice of liver topped with a slice of bacon.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off most fat from the pan.

  2. Add butter, flour, water, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to a browned, tender slice.
Bacon
Its fat fries the liver and its crisp slices add salty, savory flavor.
Flour
Dredging coats the liver so it browns, and it thickens the pan gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the liver in the bacon fat until browned. Liver is lean and cooks fast; over-frying toughens it and makes it dry and grainy. Medium heat and a short cook keep it tender while the flour coating browns.

“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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