Name: Fried Liver and Bacon
Ingredients: 1 pound liver, cut into ½ inch thick slices; ½ cup flour; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; 4 slices bacon; 1 tablespoon flour (for sauce); water (as needed for sauce)

Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

Boil the liver slices in water for a few minutes.
Drain the liver slices and coat them with flour, pepper, and salt.

Fry and make the sauce

In a hot frying pan, cook the bacon slices until crisp.
Remove the bacon from the pan.
Add the liver slices to the same pan and cook until thoroughly done but not dried.
Remove the liver from the pan and add 1 tablespoon of flour to the remaining fat; cook until brown.
Slowly add enough water to the pan to make a thick sauce, then pour the sauce over the liver.

Serve

Arrange the bacon around the liver before serving.

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.

Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,078 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Liver + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together499 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Pepper and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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, cooked through while staying tender when not overcooked.
Flour: Coats the liver for browning and thickens the pan fat into a sauce.
Bacon: Adds salty, smoky fat to the pan that flavours the liver and sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the liver until done but not dried. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, because its proteins tighten and lose moisture with prolonged heat. Cooking just until through keeps it tender.

“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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Fried Liver and Bacon