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Liver Soup

A savory soup made from liver, butter, onion, stale bread, stock, pepper, salt, egg yolk, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Liver Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and bread

  1. Slice the liver and sprinkle it with flour.

  2. Fry the liver with butter and the sliced onion until cooked.

  3. Pound the liver thoroughly.

  4. Reduce the stale bread to crumbs.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the liver, bread crumbs, and brown stock in a pot.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, then boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg yolk and chopped parsley.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main body and rich, meaty flavor of the soup.
Stale bread
Its crumbs absorb stock and thicken the soup to a smooth body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the soup and adds richness and body when stirred in.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, carrying flavor and promoting gentle browning.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding savory aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat, and at a full boil it can curdle and turn grainy. Adding it to a soup that is no longer boiling keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, bread, pepper, egg, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, bread, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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