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Calves' Liver En Civet

A stew of sliced calf liver cooked with bacon, onion, herbs, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,420 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Calves' Liver En Civet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dust the liver slices with flour.

  2. Fry the liver lightly on both sides.

  3. Transfer the liver to a stew pan and place the fried bacon on top.

  4. Fry the sliced onion in the bacon fat until soft.

Assemble and simmer

  1. Sprinkle the onion over the liver and bacon.

  2. Add the herbs.

  3. Pour the fat from the frying pan.

  4. Rinse the pan with stock.

  5. Pour the stock over the liver.

  6. Cover with a lid and simmer slowly for 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' liver
Its protein and firm texture set the body of the dish, becoming tender with slow simmering.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the liver and forms the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Spanish onion
Softened in bacon fat, it adds sweetness and body to the sauce.
Bacon
Its rendered fat flavours the onion, and its savoury meat seasons the dish.
Flour
A light dusting helps the liver brown during frying and thickens the sauce slightly.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly with a lid on. Liver is delicate and turns grainy, dry and tough if cooked hard or too long. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the liver moist and tender while the stock flavours it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour. 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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