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Braised Liver

A braised lamb liver cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, and a savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the liver

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

  2. Use a larding needle to lard the liver with the bacon strips until one side is covered.

Brown and make the sauce

  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.

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

  4. Wash, scrape, and cut the carrot in half.

  5. Wash and peel the onion or button onions.

Braise and serve

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

  2. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Pepper + thymetop 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
Main ingredient; slow braising keeps its interior tender and moist.
Bacon
Its fat bastes the liver, adding richness and savory flavor.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the liver's surface and enriches the dish.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce as it boils.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma to the braising liquid.
Onion
Softens during braising, adding savory sweetness and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the liver without burning it. Browning creates savory flavor through Maillard reactions, but milk solids and butter scorch quickly above that range, turning the surface bitter and tainting the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

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