Why it works: Liver and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,375 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Bacon and Liver
Ingredients
Directions
Assemble
In a baking dish, layer thinly sliced bacon.
Add a layer of evenly sliced liver and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Top with another layer of bacon.
Pour in 1 cup of hot water, adding more if needed.
Bake
Bake for 2 hours.
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.
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Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Bacon
- Renders fat as it bakes, moistening the liver and adding salty, savory flavor.
- Liver
- Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and tender as it cooks through.
The step that matters
Pour in the hot water. Liver is lean and dries out and turns tough during a long bake. The water creates steam and keeps the dish moist, so adding more when the dish looks dry helps it stay tender.
“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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