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Sunday Breakfast

A hearty breakfast of sliced calf liver and brains fried in bacon fat, served with gravy and French fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,418 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sunday Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the liver and bacon

  1. Fry the bacon until crisp.

  2. Remove the bacon and keep it hot.

  3. Cut the liver into ½‑inch thick slices.

  4. Dredge the liver slices with flour.

  5. Fry the liver slowly in the hot bacon fat.

  6. Transfer the liver to a hot plate with the bacon.

  7. Thicken the gravy.

  8. Pour the gravy over the liver.

Prepare the brains

  1. Wash the calf brains thoroughly.

  2. Soak the brains in salted cold water.

  3. Boil the brains until tender.

  4. Place the boiled brains on another hot dish.

  5. Cover the brains with white gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve the liver and brains together with French fried potatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Liver + fried potatotop 60% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes
  3. Flour + fried potatotop 81% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenal (green, grassy).

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; frying it slowly keeps it tender rather than tough.
Breakfast bacon
Its fat fries the liver and adds smoky, savoury flavour to the dish.
Flour
Dredging forms a thin coating that browns in the fat and helps thicken the gravy.
Calf brains
Provide a soft, creamy texture when boiled until tender.

The step that matters

Fry the liver slowly in the hot bacon fat. Liver is lean and delicate; high heat or long cooking toughens its proteins and makes it dry and grainy, while gentle frying keeps it tender and evenly browned.

“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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