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Calf’s Liver with Piquante Sauce

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked in a piquant sauce of shallots, gherkins, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf’s Liver with Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and dry the liver thoroughly, then cut it into neat slices.

  2. Mix 1 tablespoon flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper together, and dip the liver slices in the mixture.

  3. Combine shallots or onion, gherkins, and vinegar in a small saucepan. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes and keep hot.

Fry the liver

  1. Fry the liver in hot fat until lightly cooked and nicely browned, then remove and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour away excess fat from the frying pan, leaving the brown sediment. Add butter and heat until melted.

  2. Sprinkle in the remaining flour, stir, and fry slowly until well browned.

  3. Add water and season to taste. Stir until boiling, then simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce and mix with the vinegar mixture.

Serve

  1. Arrange the liver on a hot dish, pour the sauce around it, and serve immediately.

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 + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 quickly to stay tender and browned on the outside.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and, cooked in butter, thickens the sauce into a roux.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour brown into a nutty, flavourful base for the sauce.
Shallots or onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the sharp sauce.
Gherkins
Add sharp, salty acidity that gives the sauce its piquant character.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the rich liver and sauce and softens the shallots.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the fat. The flour must brown slowly over gentle heat until well coloured. Browning develops nutty flavour and colour, but scorched flour tastes bitter and can spoil the whole sauce.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

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