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Fried Liver

Fried liver is liver slices boiled, dredged in flour, salt, pepper, and fried with pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Fried Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Pour boiling water over the liver and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the liver and dredge it with flour, salt, and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry six slices of pork until brown and remove them from the pan.

  2. In the same fat, fry the liver for 15 minutes.

  3. Serve the fried liver with the pork.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its rich, meaty flavor.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown in the pan and develop a crisp surface.
Pork
Supplies fat for frying the liver and adds browned flavor to the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the liver for 15 minutes. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, so it should be fried until just cooked through and browned on the outside, and the pan should stay at a steady heat so the coating browns without burning.

“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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