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Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver fried with bacon, garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the calf's liver into slices about ½ inch thick.

  2. Melt the dripping in a frying pan.

Cook

  1. Dredge the liver slices in flour and fry them over medium‑high heat until browned.

  2. Fry the rashers of bacon until crispy.

Serve

  1. Place the liver on a hot dish and top with the bacon.

  2. Garnish with crisp parsley and lemon slices.

  3. Optionally, serve with melted butter or make a sauce with butter and flour, pouring it over the liver and bacon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter 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, with a tender interior when cooked briefly.
Dripping
Cooking fat that browns the floured liver slices and adds savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the liver so it browns and forms a light crust during frying.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and crisp texture against the soft liver.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the optional sauce or melted topping.

The step that matters

Fry the liver over medium‑high heat until browned. Liver is thin and cooks quickly; overcooking makes it dry and tough. Flour helps it brown well, so watch the colour rather than the clock.

“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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