Skip to main content
Drink

Liver Ketchup

A liver-based condiment made with salt herrings, celery, egg whites, spices, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Liver Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the liver into 1‑inch square pieces.

  2. Combine the liver, chopped herrings, and celery in a large pot with enough water to cover them.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 16 hours, ensuring it remains boiling.

Clarify and season

  1. Strain the mixture and add the egg whites (with shells) to the liquid.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, then strain through a jelly bag.

  3. Mix in the black pepper, Jamaica pepper, cloves, salt, and cayenne.

  4. Boil the mixture for 20 minutes.

Bottle and rest

  1. Bottle the ketchup with the spices and let it stand for 24 hours before sealing.

  2. If not dark enough, burn a small amount of refined sugar and mix it in before removing from heat.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

  5. Liver + celerytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Cow's liver
Provides the main body and deep meaty flavour of the ketchup.
Egg whites
Bind to fine particles and help clear the liquid when strained through the jelly bag.
Salt herrings
Add salty, savoury depth to the base liquid.
Celery
Adds a vegetal, aromatic background to the simmered base.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg whites. Egg whites coagulate as they heat and trap suspended particles. Boiling them into the liquid and then straining through a jelly bag produces a clearer ketchup; skipping or rushing this leaves it cloudy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, celery, egg, 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes