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Foie En Matelotte

A dish of sliced calf liver fried and served in a sauce of parsley, shallots, chives, capers, and red wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 405 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Foie En Matelotte

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Dust the liver slices with flour.

Cook

  1. In a skillet, melt butter over medium heat and fry the liver slices, turning often until browned.

  2. In a separate saucepan, combine parsley, shallots, chives, capers, red wine, salt, pepper, and the clove.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the liver to warm in the sauce.

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. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Chive + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, with browning giving it savoury flavour and a seared surface.
Flour
Dusting creates a thin coating that browns in the butter and helps the liver crust.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat evenly and adds browning and rich flavour to the liver.
Red wine
Liquid base of the sauce that adds acidity and depth as it reduces with the aromatics.
Shallots
Mild aromatic that sweetens and deepens the sauce as it softens in the liquid.
Capers
Brined buds that add sharp acidity and salty contrast to the rich liver.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil before adding the liver. Once the liver goes in, it should only warm gently, because overcooking makes calf's liver grainy and tough. Heating the sauce first lets the wine and aromatics be ready so the liver is not kept at a boil.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, flour, butter, shallot, chive, capers, red wine):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, flour, butter, shallot, chive, capers, red wine. 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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