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Stewed Liver and Bacon

A stew of sliced calf liver and bacon with onions, flour, ketchup, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and brown

  1. Fry bacon in a pan until crispy, then transfer to a stew pan.

  2. Wash liver, cut into slices, then dredge slices in flour.

  3. Fry floured liver in same pan until browned, then remove.

  4. Fry sliced onions in pan until softened.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Stir in remaining flour and ketchup, then add water and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Bring mixture to a boil, then pour over meat and simmer for one hour.

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

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

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Calf's liver
Is the main meat, cooked tender by gentle simmering in the sauce.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan and adds savoury, salty flavour to the stew.
Flour
Coats the liver for browning and thickens the sauce as it simmers.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding body and depth to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity that rounds out the savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the floured liver before stewing. Browning sears the flour coating and surface of the liver, building savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Liver cooked too long or too hard turns dry and grainy, so the simmer time matters.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, flour, ketchup. 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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