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Calf S Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked in bacon fat, finished with butter, flour, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Calf S Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices and match the number of bacon slices to liver slices.

  2. Fry the bacon first and place it on a hot dish.

Cook the liver

  1. Fry the liver in the bacon fat, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  2. Dredge the liver with a little flour.

  3. Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. When done, arrange the liver around the dish with a piece of bacon between each slice.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off the bacon fat.

  2. Add butter and dredge the butter in flour.

  3. Add lemon juice and water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Pour the sauce into the center of the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked to be tender when sliced thin and fried.
Bacon
Provides rendered fat for frying the liver and adds salty, smoky flavor.
Flour
Lightly coats the liver and thickens the pan sauce as it cooks with the fat and liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the pan sauce, thickened with flour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning. Thin liver slices cook quickly, and sugars and proteins on the surface brown fast in hot fat. Turning them evenly keeps the outside from scorching before the inside is done, and keeps the texture tender rather than tough.

“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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