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Minced Liver

A dish of finely chopped liver simmered with onions, pepper, salt, and bread crumbs, served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Minced Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Simmer the liver in water for 25 minutes, then drain and chop finely.

Cook the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the chopped liver, onions, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cover with cold water and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Add enough bread crumbs to create a thick gravy.

Serve

  1. Make a border of mashed potatoes on a platter and pour the minced liver in the center.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 gives it its rich, meaty flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and thicken the mixture into a gravy-like texture.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, pepper, bread. 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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