Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓
Larded Liver
Ingredients
Directions
Slice the liver or ask your butcher to do it.
Soak the liver in cold water with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for 30 minutes to draw out the blood.
Cut the fat raw salt pork into strips 1 inch long and ¼ inch thick.
Remove the liver from the water and pat it dry with a clean cloth.
Make holes 1 inch apart in the liver using a knife.
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 + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,606 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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