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Calf’s Liver Stewed with Egg Sauce

A stew of calf's liver cooked with onion, spices, and finished with an egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Stewed with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the liver as directed.

  2. Grill the liver briefly, then cut it into walnut-sized pieces.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the onion, white pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and water.

  2. Cook until done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, flour, lemon juice, parsley, and marjoram.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cooked 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 stew, providing the dish's rich, meaty texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Stabilises the egg sauce so it thickens evenly without curdling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and balances the egg sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the egg sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can curdle if they get too hot. Pour the sauce over the liver off the heat or on very low heat, stirring steadily, so it turns silky rather than scrambled.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, nutmeg, egg, flour, lemon, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, nutmeg, egg, flour, lemon, 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.

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