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Calf's Liver Sauté

A sauté of calf liver with butter, shallot, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Calf's Liver Sauté

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shallot

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the shallot to the butter and let it sit for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the shallot from the saucepan.

Cook the liver

  1. Place the slice of calf's liver in the saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle the liver with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  3. Cook the liver gently for 30 minutes without letting it simmer.

  4. Turn the liver over and continue cooking in its own juices for another 30 minutes.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
The main ingredient; gentle cooking keeps its texture tender rather than firm and grainy.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking and rich flavor while the liver gently browns.
Shallot
Softens in the butter and adds a mild, sweet, onion-like flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the liver gently without simmering. High heat or boiling toughens the liver's proteins, making it dry, grainy and rubbery. Low, steady heat cooks it through while keeping it tender and juicy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, liver, pepper, 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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