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The Housewife’s Calf’s Liver

A sautéed calf liver dish finished with a sauce of flour, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

The Housewife’s Calf’s Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into large slices, removing any hard nerves.

  2. Combine the liver, parsley, shallots, spring onions, and butter or lard in a saucepan.

Cook the sauce

  1. Fry the mixture lightly.

  2. Add flour, warm water, white wine or vinegar, salt, and whole pepper.

  3. Let the mixture boil for 30 minutes.

Finish

  1. Mix the egg yolks with lemon juice.

  2. Add the egg yolk mixture to the liver to thicken the sauce without boiling.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 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, becoming tender and firm as it cooks.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for frying, carrying flavor and a richer mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Starch that helps thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Proteins that thicken and enrich the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
White wine or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat and yolks.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic base that softens and flavors the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set at temperatures near simmering, so boiling after adding them can curdle or scramble the sauce. Stirring the yolk mixture into the hot liquid off the boil thickens it gently and keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, parsley, shallot, butter, flour, white wine, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, parsley, shallot, butter, flour, white wine, 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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