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Calf’s Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver fried with bacon and served with a stock gravy.

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 ↓

Calf’s Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into ½‑inch slices and wash in warm water with a little salt.

  2. Dry the liver slices thoroughly.

  3. Mix flour with salt and pepper on a plate.

  4. Roll each liver slice in the seasoned flour.

  5. Cut the bacon into very thin slices.

Cook the liver and bacon

  1. Melt butter or bacon fat in a frying pan.

  2. Cook the liver slices gently for 15 minutes, turning them 2–3 times.

  3. Fry the bacon slices in a hot frying pan for about 1 minute until curled.

  4. Arrange the liver in the center of a hot dish and place the bacon around it.

Make the gravy

  1. Dredge 1 teaspoon of flour into the frying pan.

  2. Add ¼ pint of weak stock or water and boil.

  3. Strain the gravy and pour it around the liver.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main meat, cooked gently so it stays tender and moist.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat and flavour, and crisp curled texture as a garnish.
Flour
Coats the liver and thickens the pan juices into a gravy.
Butter or bacon fat
Fries the liver, adding richness and helping it brown lightly.

The step that matters

Cook the liver slices gently. Liver turns dry and tough when overcooked. Gentle heat for a set time, with turning, cooks it evenly and keeps it tender inside.

“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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