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Calf’s Liver and Bacon

A dish of sliced calf liver cooked in bacon fat and served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Calf’s Liver and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  2. Fry the bacon until crispy and place on a hot dish.

Cook the liver

  1. In the bacon fat, fry the liver, seasoning with pepper and salt, and dredging with a little flour.

  2. Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning.

  3. Once cooked, arrange the liver around the dish with a slice of bacon between each piece.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off excess bacon fat, add butter, a little flour, lemon juice, and water to the pan.

  2. Bring to a boil and pour the sauce in the center of the 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Calf's liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked quickly to stay tender inside.
Bacon
Adds salty, savory fat that flavors the liver and crisps for contrast.
Flour
Dredging coats the liver, helping it brown and thickening the pan sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon fat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pan sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the liver occasionally. Liver is thin and lean, so it dries out and toughens quickly. Turning it regularly exposes both sides to even heat, preventing burning and keeping the interior moist.

“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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