Skip to main content
Main

Liver and Bacon

A slow‑cooked stew of diced liver, bacon, turnips, and onions in a broth of water and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into large dice.

  2. Heat the fat in a frying pan.

Fry the base

  1. Dice the bacon and fry for 5 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the bacon, then add the liver, salt, and pepper; fry for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the water and stir well.

Bake and serve

  1. Combine with turnips and onions in a pan.

  2. Pour in boiling water and cover.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 50 minutes.

  4. Serve with toasted sippets around the dish.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Liver
Gives the stew its rich, meaty flavour and substance.
Bacon
Its rendered fat carries savoury flavour through the whole stew.
Flour
Starch thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Onions
Soften and turn mildly sweet as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Turnips
Cook until tender and add body and a mild sweetness to the stew.

The step that matters

Frying the flour in the bacon fat. Flour cooked in fat before liquid is added coats the pieces evenly and thickens smoothly; adding it raw or unevenly can leave lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, liver, pepper, turnip):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, liver, pepper, turnip. 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

Turnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes