Skip to main content
Main

To Fry Calf's Liver and Bacon

Calf's liver fried with bacon and served in a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Fry Calf's Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak the liver in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Dry the liver with a cloth.

  3. Coat the liver in flour.

Cook the liver and bacon

  1. Fry the bacon and parsley in a pan until crispy.

  2. Add the liver to the pan.

  3. Cook the liver until browned.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix flour with water and butter in a cup.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pan.

  3. Stir well.

  4. Cook until the sauce thickens.

  5. Serve the liver and bacon with the sauce poured over.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  4. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Main protein; browns on the outside while staying tender inside when cooked briefly.
Bacon
Adds salty, savory fat that crisps in the pan and flavors the dish.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the sauce when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the liver until browned. Liver is lean and overcooking toughens it and makes it grainy. A quick, hot sear browns the coating while keeping the inside tender, so timing matters more than the exact minute count.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, butter. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes