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A Nice Way of Cooking Calf or Pig's Liver

Slices of calf or pig liver are browned and simmered in a gravy of onion, salt, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Nice Way of Cooking Calf or Pig's Liver

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Pour boiling water over the liver slices and drain completely.

Cook the liver

  1. Brown the liver in its own juices, turning until both sides are browned.

Make the gravy

  1. Add enough cold water to the frying pan to make gravy.

  2. Stir in the onion, salt, nutmeg, and a bit of butter.

  3. Bring to a boil, then return the liver to the pan for 1 minute.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Onion + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main protein and the rich flavour that the gravy carries.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy as it cooks down.
Butter
Adds fat and a richer, rounder mouthfeel to the gravy.

The step that matters

Return the liver for only 1 minute. Liver is delicate and overcooks quickly; prolonged boiling toughens its proteins and makes it grainy and dry, so it should only be heated briefly in the simmering gravy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, butter):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, butter. 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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