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Stewed Liver

A liver stew cooked with bacon, onions, herbs, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onions.

  2. Cut the bacon into slices and remove the rind.

  3. Slice the liver and sprinkle with flour.

Cook the bacon and onions

  1. Fry the bacon in a frying pan until brown, then set aside.

  2. In the same pan, fry the onions in the bacon fat until soft.

Stew

  1. Pour the water into the pan with the onions, then stir in the herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the liver and fried bacon to the pan, cover, and stew slowly for about an hour.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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
Forms the main body of the dish and turns tender as it stews slowly in liquid.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the pan for frying the onions.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook in the bacon fat.
Flour
Coats the liver and helps thicken the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew slowly with the lid on. Liver turns firm and tough when it is cooked too hard or too long. A gentle, covered simmer keeps the liver moist and tender while the flour thickens the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, 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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