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Calf’s Liver with Piquante Sauce

A sautéed calf liver served with a piquant sauce of shallots, gherkins, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Calf’s Liver with Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash and dry the liver thoroughly.

  2. Cut the liver into neat slices.

  3. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper together.

  4. Dip the liver slices in the mixture.

Make the piquant base

  1. In a small saucepan, combine shallots or onion, gherkins, and vinegar.

  2. Boil the mixture rapidly for 10 minutes and keep hot.

Fry the liver

  1. Fry the liver in hot fat until lightly cooked and browned.

  2. Remove the liver from the pan and keep warm.

  3. Pour away excess fat from the frying pan, leaving the brown sediment.

Make the sauce

  1. Add butter to the pan and heat.

  2. Sprinkle in the remaining flour. Stir the mixture. Fry slowly until browned.

  3. Add water and seasoning to taste. Stir until boiling. Simmer gently for 5 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce.

  5. Mix the strained sauce with the vinegar mixture.

Serve

  1. Arrange the liver on a hot dish.

  2. Pour the sauce around the liver.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 protein, cooked quickly so it stays tender and browned outside.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the flour for the sauce base.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the sauce through its starch.
Shallots or onion
Provides savoury sweetness and aroma to the piquant sauce.
Gherkins
Add sharp, salty crunch that gives the sauce its piquant character.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the rich liver.

The step that matters

Frying the liver until just lightly cooked. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, so it should be browned quickly over high heat and removed while still slightly pink inside, since it keeps cooking briefly after leaving the pan.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, flour, vinegar, pepper. 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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