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Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of thinly sliced calf liver cooked with bacon, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the liver and soak it in cold water to remove blood.

  2. Slice the liver thinly, season with salt and pepper, and roll in flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the bacon in a skillet until crispy, then remove it.

  2. In the same skillet, fry the liver, adding water and covering for a few minutes to keep it tender.

  3. Serve the liver with the bacon.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 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

Calf's liver
Main protein; cooks quickly and turns firm or dry if overcooked.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat and crisp texture to the dish.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the liver brown in the pan.
Water
Added to the skillet with a lid to create steam that keeps the liver tender.

The step that matters

Frying the liver. Liver is lean and delicate, so brief cooking over moderate heat keeps it tender. Overcooking makes it tough and grainy as its proteins tighten. The added water and covering help gentle steaming.

“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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