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Stewed Liver and Bacon

A stew of liver and bacon cooked slowly with water, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the liver and cut it into small, thin pieces.

  2. Roll the liver pieces in flour, pepper, and salt.

Cook the bacon and brown the liver

  1. In a frying pan, cook the bacon until crispy, then remove it.

  2. In the bacon fat, quickly brown the liver pieces.

Stew and serve

  1. Transfer the liver to a stewpan, add water and sauces, and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Warm the bacon just before serving and garnish the dish with it.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Liver + mushroomtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main body and rich flavour of the dish, becoming tender with slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat for browning the liver and a crisp garnish.
Flour
Coats the liver pieces, helping them brown and thickening the stewing liquid.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the stewing liquid.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth that rounds out the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Quickly brown the liver in the bacon fat. Searing the floured liver briefly over high heat builds browned flavour on the surface. Overcooking at this stage toughens the liver before the slow stew even begins.

“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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