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Larded Calf's Liver

A liver larded with fresh pork, simmered with onion, cloves, lard, water, and sweet marjoram or thyme.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,075 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Larded Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Scald the calf's liver and remove the skin.

  2. Lard the liver thickly with fresh pork.

Cook

  1. Place the liver in a dripping pan with the onion stuck with cloves, a lump of lard, a little water, and sweet marjoram or thyme.

  2. Simmer slowly for 5 to 6 hours.

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. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Onion + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking down to a tender, sliceable texture over long, slow heat.
Fresh pork
Lardons add fat that melts into the liver, keeping it moist and rich during long cooking.
Lard
Adds fat to the pan, enriching flavour and helping prevent the liver from drying out.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the pan liquid as it cooks slowly.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 5 to 6 hours. Long, gentle heat lets connective tissue and fat break down slowly, giving tenderness. Too much heat toughens and dries the liver, so keep the liquid barely simmering and check that a little water remains in the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pork, clove, marjoram):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, clove, marjoram. 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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