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Larded Liver

A liver larded with bacon or ham, simmered with onion, marjoram, and seasonings, then browned and served with its gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Larded Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the calf’s liver with bacon or ham.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Tie a cord around the liver to keep its shape.

Simmer

  1. Place in a kettle with cold water, bacon, chopped onion, and sweet marjoram.

  2. Simmer slowly for two hours.

Brown and serve

  1. Pour off the gravy into a gravy dish.

  2. Brown the liver in the kettle.

  3. Serve with the gravy.

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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + marjoramtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  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

Calf’s liver
Is the main meat, cooked gently so it stays tender and moist.
Bacon or ham
Larding adds fat and salty, savoury flavour that melts into the liver during cooking.
Bacon
Renders fat into the simmering water, flavouring the liquid and the gravy.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aroma into the cooking liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for two hours. Long, gentle simmering keeps liver tender; a rolling boil toughens its proteins and makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, pepper, marjoram):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, pepper, marjoram. 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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