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Steamed Liver

A dish of liver steamed with bacon or suet, flour, spices, and gravy, served with potatoes or apple and lettuce salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steamed Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak the liver in water or sour milk for 1 hour, changing the water several times to remove toxic blood.

  2. Remove the skin from the liver and tie bacon or suet over it.

  3. Roll the liver in flour and steam in fat for 20 minutes.

Steam and season

  1. Add enough boiling water to half cover the liver.

  2. Flavor with bay leaves, salt, pepper, onions, vinegar, and sugar, then steam for about 1 hour, keeping the saucepan covered.

Serve

  1. Serve with potatoes or an apple and lettuce salad.

  2. Strain the gravy for use the next day.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by steaming until tender.
Bacon or suet
Adds fat that bastes the liver and keeps it moist during steaming.
Flour
Coats the liver so its surface browns and the juices are held in.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma to the steaming liquid and gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavor of the liver.

The step that matters

Keeping the saucepan covered while steaming. Covering the pan traps steam so the liver cooks evenly in moist heat. If the liquid boils away or the lid is lifted too often, the liver can dry out and turn tough.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, pepper, onion, vinegar, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, pepper, onion, vinegar, sugar. 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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