Name: Calf’s Liver and Bacon
Ingredients: 2 to 3 lbs of calf's liver; bacon; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ½ pint of water

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Calf’s Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the bacon until crisp and set it aside on a hot plate.
In the bacon fat, cook the liver, seasoning it with pepper and salt to prevent burning.
Once cooked, remove the liver and keep it warm.
Add lemon juice and water to the pan, stirring to combine.
Serve the liver garnished with bacon and lemon slices.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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, cooked quickly in bacon fat to stay tender and browned.
Bacon: Adds salty, smoky fat for frying the liver and crisp pieces for garnish.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the liver in bacon fat. Liver overcooks quickly and turns dry and grainy when held over heat too long. Cooking it briefly over moderate heat, and removing it once just done, keeps it tender.

“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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Calf’s Liver and Bacon