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Liver and Bacon Pudding

A pudding made with sliced calf's liver, bacon, butter, fine herbs, and brown sauce, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sauté the calf's liver slices in a buttered pan with fine herbs for a few minutes.

  2. Cut the liver into convenient pieces.

Assemble and cook

  1. Layer the liver and bacon in a pudding basin.

  2. Pour in the reduced brown sauce.

  3. Cover and boil for two hours.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Liver + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together499 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Provides the main body and rich flavour of the pudding filling.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and salty flavour that moistens the layered filling.
Brown sauce
Supplies moisture and savoury depth as it cooks into the filling.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for two hours. Liver turns tough and grainy if overcooked, while a steamed pudding needs a steady, gentle boil to cook through. Keep the water simmering and topped up so the pudding cooks evenly without drying out.

“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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