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Braised Liver

Braised sheep liver cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Braised Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bacon into strips, 1 inch long and ⅛ inch wide.

  2. Use a larding needle to insert the bacon strips into the liver in regular rows until one side is covered.

  3. Wash and scrape the carrot, then cut it in half.

  4. Wash and peel the onion or button onions.

Brown the liver

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan, add the larded liver, and fry until browned, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Remove the liver and set it on a plate.

Make the sauce and braise

  1. Stir the flour into the butter in the stewpan, then pour in the stock or water, stirring until it boils and thickens.

  2. Add the vegetables and liver back to the stewpan, season with salt and pepper, and add the bouquet garni.

  3. Let it simmer gently for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Remove the liver, place it on a hot dish, and strain the sauce over 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's liver
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender during the long gentle simmer.
Bacon fat
Larded strips add fat and savoury flavour that melt into the liver during cooking.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the liver surface and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Cooked into the butter to form a roux that thickens the stock into a sauce.
Stock or water
Provides the liquid that braises the liver and forms the body of the sauce.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it softens in the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the larded liver. Frying until browned builds rich flavour on the surface, but burnt spots turn bitter. Gentle, even heat and close watching give colour without scorching before the liver braises.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, carrot, thyme, parsley, flour, pepper, butter. 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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