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Liver “a LA Menagere”

A sauté liver dish with onions, flour, stock, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Liver “a LA Menagere”

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  2. In a skillet, toss the liver in butter with pepper, salt, and a bay leaf until browned.

  3. Remove the liver and keep it warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the same skillet, add chopped onions and brown them in the remaining butter.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the onions and add stock; boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Return the liver to the skillet and simmer until cooked through.

  4. Stir in egg yolks and lemon juice, then serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Liver
The main ingredient, browned quickly and then cooked through in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the liver and onions and adds richness to the dish.
Onions
Browned to add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in egg yolks and lemon juice. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is boiling. Adding them off the heat or at low heat, and not letting the sauce boil afterward, keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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