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To Stew Calfs Liver

A stew of sliced calf liver, bacon, and aromatics simmered in gravy and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew Calfs Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cover each slice of liver with thin bacon.

  2. Fry the bacon-covered liver for 10 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the liver slices in a stewpan with gravy, garlic, parsley, lemon rind, bay leaf, salt, pepper, cloves, and port wine.

  2. Stew gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the liver, strain the gravy over it, and serve with the fried bacon around it.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 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 dish and becomes tender with gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the liver as it cooks.
Gravy
Provides the moist cooking liquid that the liver stews in.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 minutes. Liver is delicate and turns tough and grainy when boiled or cooked too hard. A gentle simmer keeps the proteins tender and the slices moist.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, clove, parsley, lemon, pepper, port wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, clove, parsley, lemon, pepper, port wine. 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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