Skip to main content
Main

To Preserve Beef Liver for Gravy

A method of preserving beef liver in a sugar, salt, and herb pickle for later use in gravy.

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

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Preserve Beef Liver for Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the liver

  1. Rub the liver all over with the sugar or treacle and let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Rub the liver with saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and common salt.

  3. Let it sit in the pickle for 3 weeks, turning and rubbing it daily.

  4. Hang the liver near the fire to dry.

Prepare and serve

  1. When ready to use, cut slices and boil them in water for the gravy.

  2. Add herbs or an onion if desired.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Beef + livertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + oniontop 36% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,747 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

Beef liver
Serves as the main meat; curing firms and seasons it for slicing and boiling.
Sugar or treacle
Adds sweetness and draws moisture out of the liver during the first rub.
Saltpetre
Gives the liver its characteristic pink colour and cured flavour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the liver and seasons it throughout the curing period.
Common salt
Seasons the liver and helps preserve it during the long cure.

The step that matters

Turning and rubbing the liver daily during the 3-week pickle. Salt and curing agents only penetrate evenly if the surface is kept in contact with the pickle. Skipping the daily turn can leave the centre under-cured and the outside over-salted.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, liver, sugar):

  1. Onionthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes