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Liver and Bacon

A savory dish of diced liver and bacon cooked with turnips, onions, and water, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,585 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Heat the fat in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the bacon for 5 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the bacon.

  4. Add the liver, salt, and pepper; fry for another 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the water.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a pan.

  2. Add the turnips, onions, and boiling water.

  3. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 50 minutes.

  4. Serve with toasted bread around the dish.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and savoury as it cooks.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan, adding savoury flavour and browning the base.
Flour
Coats the bacon and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Turnips
Add body and mild sweetness as they soften during baking.
Onions
Soften and sweeten during baking, adding depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry the bacon and liver before adding liquid. Browning the bacon and liver in fat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Adding water too early would steam the meat instead of browning it, leaving a paler, blander dish.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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