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Liver a LA Buisse

A French-style liver dish cooked in butter and seasoned with pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Liver a LA Buisse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish over heat until hot.

  2. Skin the liver and cut it into pencil-sized slices, about 1 inch long.

Cook

  1. Cook the liver over hot water for 10 minutes with the cover on.

  2. Remove the cover and cook over open fire, stirring constantly for about 5 minutes until cooked through but not dried out.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, then serve.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Liver
Provides the main body of the dish, and cooks quickly to a tender texture when not overcooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the liver brown lightly and carry flavour in the pan.

The step that matters

Cooking the liver through without drying it out. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, because its proteins tighten under sustained heat. Covered cooking over hot water gentles the heat first, and the short stirred finish over open fire should stop as soon as the slices are cooked through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, liver, 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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