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To Preserve Bee Liver for Gravy

A method of preserving a clear liver with sugar, saltpetre, and sea salt for later use in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and sugar work together. They rank in the top 40% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 177 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Bee Liver for Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the liver

  1. Rub the liver all over with the sugar or treacle.

  2. Let it sit for 24 hours.

  3. Rub the liver with saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and common salt.

  4. Let it pickle for 3 weeks, turning and rubbing daily.

  5. Hang it near the fire to dry.

Use for gravy

  1. When ready to use, cut slices and boil them in water for gravy.

  2. Add herbs or an onion if desired.

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. Liver + sugartop 40% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 preserved meat that flavours the gravy.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink colour during curing and inhibits spoilage.
Coarse sugar or treacle
Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and preserves the liver during the long pickling period.

The step that matters

Turning and rubbing daily during the pickle. Salt and cure must reach every part of the liver evenly; skipping the daily turning can leave spots under-cured and open to spoilage over the three-week pickle.

“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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