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Calves’ Liver En Civet

A dish 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

  1. Dust the liver slices with flour.

  2. Fry the liver lightly on both sides.

Make the civet

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

  2. Fry the sliced onion in the bacon fat until softened.

  3. Sprinkle the fried onion and herbs over the liver and bacon.

  4. Pour the fat from the frying pan, rinse it with stock, and pour over the liver.

  5. 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender when gently simmered.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the liver and sauce as it renders.
Spanish onion
Softens and sweetens in bacon fat, adding depth to the sauce.
Flour
Light coating that helps the liver brown and slightly thickens the sauce.
Stock
Liquid that moistens the liver and forms the base of the civet sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly with the lid on. Liver turns grainy and tough if cooked hard or too long, so a gentle, covered simmer keeps it tender and moist.

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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