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Calf's Liver À LA Bourgeoise

A sautéed calf liver dish with shallot, parsley, green onions, and a sauce thickened with flour and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley 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 ↓

Calf's Liver À LA Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sliced calf's liver, shallot, parsley, green onions, and butter.

  2. Cook over medium heat, shaking the pan occasionally, and sprinkle in the flour.

  3. Add the water and white wine, then season with salt and coarse black pepper.

  4. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 30 minutes.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the vinegar.

  2. When the liver is cooked and the sauce is nearly reduced, stir in the egg mixture to thicken the sauce.

  3. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the liver brown lightly in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid and helps form the sauce body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the rich liver and butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk mixture. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but if the sauce is too hot or boiling when they are added, the yolks can scramble and turn grainy. Remove from the heat or lower it before stirring in the mixture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, white wine, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, white wine, 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.

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