Skip to main content
Main

With Bacon

Liver strips baked with breadcrumbs, mushrooms, parsley, onion, bacon, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

With Bacon

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a baking tin.

  3. Lay the liver strips side by side in the tin.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the breadcrumbs, mushrooms, parsley, and onion; season with pepper and salt.

  2. Pile the mixture on top of the liver strips.

  3. Place a piece of bacon over each strip.

  4. Bake for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully transfer the liver to a hot dish.

  2. Add the sauce to the gravy and pour it around the liver.

  3. Sprinkle brown breadcrumbs over the dish and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender with gentle baking.
Bacon slices
Lays fat over the liver, adding flavour and moisture as it cooks.
Brown breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when sprinkled over the dish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the breadcrumb stuffing mixture.
Harvey's or worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth to the sauce and gravy.

The step that matters

Baking the liver for 45 minutes. Liver is lean and becomes dry and tough when overcooked, so it should be checked and removed once just cooked through. Covering it with bacon and a moist mixture helps protect it from drying out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sauce, liver, mushroom, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sauce, liver, mushroom, parsley. 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.

More liver with bacon recipes

Calf 12Fried 9Fried Calf 3 See all 2 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes