Name: Venison Fry
Ingredients: liver of venison; fat gut; velvet from horns; sweetbreads; bacon; pepper; salt

Why it works: Liver and venison work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 52 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Venison Fry

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the liver into thin slices and place between two plates.
Cut the fat gut into 1-inch lengths and blanch with the velvet for 15 minutes.
Peel the hair from the velvet and trim the other parts.
Split the sweetbreads and slice bacon to match the number of liver slices.
Fry the bacon first, then pour most of the bacon fat into a small pan.
Fry the liver in the bacon fat, seasoning both sides with pepper and salt until cooked.
Remove the liver and place it on a wire sieve.
Heat the remaining bacon fat, add the white parts, season, and turn until browned.

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.

Liver + venisontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together52 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together955 recipes

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