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Pried Sheep’s Liver

A sautéed sheep liver dish with onions, eggs, lemon, and stock, baked and served with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Pried Sheep’s Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the liver

  1. Cut the sheep's liver into dice and wash it.

  2. In a frying pan, melt a little butter and add the liver, seasoning with pepper, salt, and a laurel leaf. Fry until cooked.

  3. Remove the liver from the pan and keep warm in a 350 °F (175 °C) oven.

Make the onion sauce

  1. Chop onions and fry them in the remaining butter until brown.

  2. Stir in a little stock and flour, and bring to a boil.

  3. Add the liver back to the pan, then mix in the eggs and a few drops of lemon juice, stirring until thick.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture onto a hot dish, garnish with lemon slices, and 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 + laureltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Laurel + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Laurel + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,335 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's liver
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked until tender in the butter.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it comes to a boil.
Eggs
Set when stirred into the hot mixture, thickening it to a creamy consistency.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and balances the eggs.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the hot mixture. Eggs set when heated, so they must be stirred in off the heat or over low heat to thicken smoothly. If the mixture is too hot or left unstirred, the eggs can scramble into small curds instead of a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, pepper, laurel, 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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