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To Roast Liver

Liver roasted with lard, oil, sweet herbs, parsley, onions, pepper, and salt, served with rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Roast Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the liver with lard and marinate it in oil, sweet herbs, parsley, onions, pepper, and salt for several hours.

Roast

  1. Place the liver in a small double grill or tie it on a spit and roast it, basting carefully for about an hour.

  2. Alternatively, roast it in a Dutch oven.

  3. Glaze it.

  4. Serve with rich gravy or poivrade.

Make scallops

  1. For scallops, cut the liver and cook slowly in a frying pan with oil, dredging with flour.

  2. Once cooked, brown it over higher heat, add a little rich stock, and finish with vinegar before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Is the main cooked meat, which gives the dish its rich, savoury flavour and firm texture.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the surface of the liver moist during cooking.
Flour
Dredged on the scallops, it helps form a light crust that browns when fried.
Rich stock
Adds liquid and savoury depth to the pan, loosening browned bits into the finish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich flavour of the liver at the end.

The step that matters

Cooking the scallops slowly, then browning over higher heat. Slow cooking keeps liver tender, while a brief high-heat browning creates colour and flavour on the surface. Overcooking liver makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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