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Brown Stew of Liver

A stew of sliced liver cooked in a brown roux with onion, water, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Brown Stew of Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sliced liver in cold salt-and-water for 30 minutes.

  2. Wipe the liver and cut it into 1-inch square pieces.

  3. Fry the sliced onion in dripping until browned, then strain it out.

Make the sauce

  1. Add browned flour to the fat and stir to make a smooth roux.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of boiling water to the roux, stirring continuously.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan, add the liver and another cup of hot water.

Stew and serve

  1. Cover and stew slowly for 1 hour or until tender.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, and tomato ketchup before serving in a deep dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Liver
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, rich sauce as it forms a roux with the fat.
Dripping
Carries flavor from the fat and helps brown the flour and onion.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it browns in the fat before stewing.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the roux smooth; dumping it in at once lets lumps of flour form that are hard to dissolve.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, flour, pepper, parsley, ketchup):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, flour, pepper, parsley, ketchup. 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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