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Chicken Livers

A sautéed chicken liver dish with butter, flour, stock, Madeira, olives, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,888 recipes. Both carry acetic acid hexyl ester, which smells sweet, green. The science ↓

Chicken Livers

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the livers

  1. In a chafing dish or saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter.

  2. Add the chicken livers and cook until browned on all sides.

  3. Dredge the livers with flour and cook for an additional five minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour in the stock and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stir in the Madeira or sherry and add the olives.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on toast.

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. Chicken + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,888 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  2. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chicken + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together891 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Butter and flour 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

Chicken livers
Provide the main protein, which browns on the outside while staying tender inside.
Flour
Coats the livers so they brown and help thicken the stock into a sauce.
Butter
Carries the heat and adds richness and browning to the livers.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and a sweet, fortified depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the livers on all sides. Livers cooked too long or too hot turn grainy and dry. Browning them quickly over medium heat seals the surface and keeps the inside tender, so they should be cooked only until just done.

“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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