Why it works: Liver and bread work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 731 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Calf’s Liver — Stewed
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the calf's liver until partially cooked.
Remove the liver from the saucepan and chop it into small pieces.
Return the chopped liver to the saucepan and skim off any impurities.
Stew the liver until tender.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Thicken the stew with a little flour.
Serve the stew over slices of toasted bread.
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 + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together731 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,375 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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
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