Why it works: Liver and sauce work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 499 recipes. Both carry decanoic acid, which smells soapy, waxy. The science ↓
Liver and Bacon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the liver into thin slices.
Cut pieces of bacon equal to the number of liver slices.
Cook
Fry the bacon until crispy.
In the remaining fat, fry the liver until crisp.
Drain excess fat by placing liver and bacon on a sieve.
Serve
Arrange the liver and bacon on a serving dish, placing a piece of bacon between each slice of liver.
Serve with piquant sauce in the center.
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.
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Liver + saucetop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together499 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
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 browns to a crisp edge when fried.
- Bacon
- Adds fat and salty, savoury flavour that carries into the liver as it cooks.
The step that matters
Fry the liver until crisp. Liver is lean and cooks quickly; overcooking dries it and makes it grainy and tough, while a brief hot sear browns the surface and keeps the inside tender.
“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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