Name: A New Way to Cook Liver
Ingredients: calf's liver or sheep's liver; boiling water; 1 tablespoon burnt flour; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 teaspoons sweet herbs; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup grated bread crumbs

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A New Way to Cook Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

Boil the liver thoroughly, then chop it very fine.

Make the gravy and cook

In a dripping pan, make a gravy with boiling water, burnt flour, butter, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt.
Stir in the chopped liver alternately with the grated bread crumbs.
Cook for about 10 minutes over high heat, stirring briskly all the time.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Liver: Forms the main body of the dish, giving it its meaty texture and rich flavour.
Burnt flour: Adds a dark colour and toasted, slightly bitter flavour to the gravy.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and smoothing the gravy.
Grated bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and help bind the chopped liver into a thick, spoonable mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking over high heat while stirring briskly. Constant stirring keeps the liver and crumbs from scorching on the hot pan and distributes the heat evenly, so the mixture thickens without burning or turning lumpy.

“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.

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Oatmeal Bread51 recipes

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A New Way to Cook Liver