Skip to main content
Main

Liver Fried in Crumbs

Sliced calf liver coated in beaten egg and cracker crumbs, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Liver and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,375 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Liver Fried in Crumbs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into slices.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  3. Dip in beaten egg and then in cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard for six 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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

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

  2. Liver + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,177 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Calves' liver
Is the main ingredient, cooked through and tender when fried in the coating.
Beaten egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the liver so the coating adheres during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot lard.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, crisping the coating and adding richness.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard for six minutes. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs soak up fat and turn greasy, and the liver may overcook before the coating browns.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes