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Calf's Liver and Bacon

A dish of thinly sliced calf's liver fried with bacon, finished in a lemon‑water 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 the liver and bacon

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

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

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

  4. Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning.

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

Make the pan sauce

  1. Pour off the bacon fat.

  2. Add a small piece of butter.

  3. Dredge in a little flour.

  4. Add the lemon juice and water.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Pour the mixture 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Its fat cooks the liver, and its crisp slices add savoury flavour alongside it.
Flour
Dredging coats the liver so it browns and thickens the pan sauce slightly.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon fat.

The step that matters

Turning the liver occasionally. Thin liver slices cook fast and dry out or toughen if overcooked, while uneven heat can scorch the floured coating. Turning them often keeps the heat even and the centre tender.

“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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