Name: Liver and Bacon
Ingredients: liver; bacon fat; flour; hot water; slices of bacon; parsley

Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Sauté the liver in a little bacon fat until cooked through.
Make a gravy by adding flour to the pan and mixing with hot water.
Heat a clean pan and add slices of bacon, about wafer-thin.
If the pan is very hot, the bacon will curl; turn with a fork to brown evenly.
Arrange the bacon around the liver and garnish with parsley.

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.

Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,418 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).