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Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced liver fried with bacon, finished with a flour‑water sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the liver and pat it dry.

  2. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  3. Flour each liver slice.

  4. Remove the rind from the bacon.

  5. Cut the bacon into thin strips.

Cook

  1. Fry the bacon.

  2. Place the bacon on a hot dish to keep warm.

  3. Fry the liver in the fat rendered from the bacon until cooked through.

  4. Lay the cooked liver on top of the bacon.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the flour with the water until smooth.

  2. Add pepper and salt to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the frying pan.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Strain the sauce over the liver and bacon.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Liver
Provides the main body of the dish and a rich, meaty flavour when cooked through.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and fat that is used to fry the liver.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the water into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.

The step that matters

Frying the liver until cooked through. Liver turns tough and grainy if overcooked, but undercooked liver is unsafe to eat. Thin slices cook quickly, so timing needs close attention.

“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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