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To Fry Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of calf's liver fried with bacon, parsley, and a flour‑water‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the liver in water for 30 minutes, then slice and dry it with a cloth.

Cook

  1. Fry the bacon and parsley in a pan until cooked.

  2. Add the liver to the pan and cook until done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate cup, mix flour with water and butter, then add salt.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan, stir well, and cook until it boils.

  3. Serve the liver and bacon with the sauce poured over.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  4. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, with its texture set by cooking until done.
Flour
Thickens the water and butter mixture into a sauce as it comes to a boil.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the pan for the liver.

The step that matters

Cooking the liver until done. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, so it should be cooked just until done and not held over heat longer than needed.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, butter. 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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