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Boiled Liver

A dish of finely chopped calf liver cooked with salt pork, bread crumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Boiled Liver

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Combine the chopped liver, salt pork, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, mace or nutmeg, and cloves in a bowl. Mix well and transfer to a covered tin pail.

Cook

  1. Place the pail in a kettle of cold water and bring to a boil. Cook for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the cover and let it dry in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  3. Allow to cool before slicing and serving cold.

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 + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the loaf and gives the dish its rich, meaty flavor.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the liver moist and adds savory richness.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture so it holds together when sliced.

The step that matters

Cooking in the covered pail. Liver is delicate and dries out or turns grainy with too much heat. Cooking gently in a covered pail in simmering water sets the mixture slowly and keeps it moist, so it slices cleanly once cooled.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, bread, pepper, clove. 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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