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Beef or Calf's Liver

A dish of sliced calf or beef liver fried and served with a gravy made from flour, milk, and pan drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beef or Calf's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the liver slices and remove the skin.

  2. Dip the liver in flour and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Fry several slices of bacon in a frying pan.

Fry the liver

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of lard to the frying pan.

  2. When the pan is very hot, add the liver and fry until nicely browned.

  3. Remove the liver from the pan.

Make the gravy

  1. Pour off some grease from the pan.

  2. Dissolve 1 teaspoon of flour in 1 cup of milk.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the frying pan.

  4. Stir the gravy to prevent burning.

  5. Season the gravy.

  6. Pour the gravy over the hot liver.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Liver + milktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Is the main meat, cooked quickly so it browns outside while staying tender inside.
Flour
Coats the liver for a browned crust and thickens the milk into gravy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which thickens as it heats.
Lard
Fat for frying that carries heat evenly and promotes browning on the liver.
Bacon
Adds smoky, salty fat to the pan that flavours the frying and the dish.

The step that matters

Fry the liver in a very hot pan. If the pan is not hot enough, the liver steams and turns grey instead of browning. Searing over high heat browns the flour coating and keeps the inside tender, so overcooking is the main risk.

“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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