Skip to main content
Main

Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced sheep liver fried with bacon, served in a ketchup and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver well.

  2. Make a few cuts in the liver to allow the blood to wash out.

  3. Dry the liver.

  4. Cut the liver into slices about ½ inch thick.

  5. Mix flour with a little salt and pepper on a plate.

  6. Dip each slice of liver in the flour mixture.

Fry the ham and liver

  1. Cut the ham into small pieces.

  2. Fry the ham lightly in a hot, clean frying pan.

  3. Remove the ham from the pan.

  4. Keep the ham warm.

  5. Fry the liver slices in the same pan for about 8 minutes.

  6. Turn the liver slices once during frying.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the remaining fat, add 1 tablespoon of flour, a little pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir the mixture until it is combined.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of ketchup.

  4. Stir until the sauce boils.

  5. Pour or strain the sauce over the liver and bacon.

  6. Garnish each piece of liver with a bit of ham.

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. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  2. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Liver + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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 provides its rich, distinctive flavor.
Flour
Coats the liver for light browning and thickens the sauce.
Pork ham
Its fat renders into the pan for frying and its pieces add savory flavor.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the liver for about 8 minutes and turn it once. Liver is lean and becomes dry and tough when overcooked, so timing matters. Turning it once cooks both sides evenly without overworking the surface.

“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 and bacon recipes

Calf 25Calf's 9Fried 6Stewed 5Fried Calf 3 See all 54 →

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes