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Liver-and-Potato Pie

A baked pie of sliced potatoes, liver, onion, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Liver-and-Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the potatoes.

  2. Place the potatoes in a saucepan with cold water to cover, then bring the water to a boil.

  3. Drain the potatoes and cut them into slices.

  4. Wash the liver in cold water and cut it into thin slices.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the bottom of a shallow baking tin with potato slices.

  2. Layer the sliced liver on top of the potatoes.

  3. Sprinkle the layer with chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add 2-3 thin slices of bacon on top.

  5. Repeat layers if desired.

  6. Bake until cooked through.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the pie and give it a soft, starchy body.
Liver
Adds rich, savoury flavour and a dense, meaty texture between the potato layers.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the layers as it cooks.
Onion
Adds sharp, sweet aroma that mellows during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Liver cooks quickly and turns grainy and tough if overcooked, while the dense potato layers need enough heat to become fully tender. Checking that both are done through is essential.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, 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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