Why it works: Liver and bread work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 731 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Liver Soup
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the liver
Cut the liver and roll into fine pieces.
Stew with kidney fat for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.
Dredge with fine flour and let cool.
Make the soup
Bruise the mixture in a mortar and thin with stock soup.
Boil the soup for 1 hour and strain through a fine sieve.
Serve
Serve with slices of toasted rolls or bread.
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.
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Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together731 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,418 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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
- Liver
- Provides the main body and rich, meaty flavour of the soup.
- Roll
- Adds bulk and body to the mixture as it is bruised and thinned.
- Fine flour
- Coats the liver pieces and helps thicken the mixture as it is stock-thinned.
- Kidney fat
- Adds fat for stewing, carrying flavour and keeping the liver moist.
The step that matters
Stewing the liver with stirring. Constant stirring keeps the small liver pieces from scorching on the bottom of the pan while they cook evenly. Scorched liver turns bitter and spoils the flavour of the whole soup.
“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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