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Scollops of Calf's Liver

A dish of calf's liver cooked with herbs, parsley, shallots, mushrooms, flour, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scollops of Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Parboil the calf's liver.

  2. Slice the parboiled liver into heart shapes.

Make the herb and mushroom base

  1. Stew the fine herbs, parsley, shallots, and mushrooms in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced liver to the stew and let it cook over low heat.

  3. Once the liver is cooked on one side, turn it over.

  4. Season the liver with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Remove the liver from the pan.

  6. Sprinkle flour over the herbs in the pan.

  7. Add more gravy to the pan.

  8. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the liver in the sauce before serving.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Calf's liver
Provides the meat that is cooked and served in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smoother sauce as it cooks.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the stewed herb base.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavor to the stew.
Gravy
Forms the liquid sauce that the liver is simmered and served in.

The step that matters

Turn the liver once cooked on one side. Liver overcooks quickly and turns firm and dry if left too long, so timing the turn and the final heating in the sauce matters for a tender result.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

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