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Liver and Bacon

A stew of thinly sliced liver and bacon simmered with onion, water, and a flour-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the liver well, dry it, and cut it into thin slices.

  2. In a basin, mix flour, sage, and pepper.

  3. Coat the liver slices in this mixture.

  4. Slice the bacon and fry it until crispy, then set aside.

Brown

  1. Fry the liver in hot fat until browned.

  2. Place the liver in a stewpan with water and add a browned onion.

Stew and finish

  1. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the bacon on top and simmer for another 15 minutes.

  3. Skim off excess fat.

  4. Thicken the sauce with the remaining flour mixed with some stock.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Liver + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 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

Liver
The main ingredient; browning in hot fat adds savoury flavour to its surface.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the sauce at the end.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury, smoky flavour to the stew.
Onion
Browned first, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Dried sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic herb flavour that suits liver.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Liver turns tough and grainy when boiled hard or cooked too long, so keep the stewpan at a gentle simmer for the stated time.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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