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To Fry Calf's Liver and Bacon

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

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 the liver

  1. Soak the liver in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Dry the liver with a cloth and set aside.

Cook

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

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

  3. Mix flour with water and butter in a cup, then stir in salt.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pan and stir until it thickens.

  5. Serve the liver and bacon with the sauce poured over it.

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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 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
Is the main protein, browning in the pan to develop savoury flavour.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan and adds salty, smoky flavour and crispness.
Flour
Thickens the pan sauce as it heats with the liquid, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Drying the liver before frying. Surface moisture steams the liver instead of letting it brown, so patting it dry with a cloth before it hits the pan is what gives a well-browned crust.

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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