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Calf's Liver Saute

A sautéed calf liver dish flavored with butter, lemon, parsley, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Calf's Liver Saute

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the liver.

  2. Pour boiling water over the slices and let them sit for 1 minute.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until very hot.

  2. Add the liver slices and cook, turning them until firm.

  3. Place the cooked liver on a hot dish.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle parsley over the liver.

  5. Add the butter from the pan and a little wine, then serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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, cooking quickly to a firm, tender texture.
Butter
Conducts heat for searing and adds richness and a browned flavour to the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the liver and butter.
Wine
Deglazes the pan, lifting browned bits into a light sauce with the butter.

The step that matters

Cook the liver until just firm in very hot butter. Liver is delicate and overcooks quickly, turning dry and grainy. Searing in very hot fat browns the surface fast, so the inside stays tender while the slices are turned only until firm.

“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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