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Liver Puddings

Liver puddings are pork livers seasoned with pepper, salt, sage, and cayenne, stuffed into sausage skins and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the pork livers until very tender, then chop them finely.

  2. Season the chopped livers with black pepper, coarse sea salt, sage, and cayenne pepper.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the seasoned livers into large sausage skins, about nine inches long, and tie the ends securely. Poke holes in the stuffed skins with a fork to prevent bursting.

  2. Boil the stuffed skins slowly in a pot for one hour.

Store

  1. Once cool, pack the liver puddings in stone jars for storage.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Liver + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork livers
Provide the main body of the filling, becoming tender when boiled and soft enough to chop finely.
Sage
Adds a warm, savory herbal aroma that defines the flavor of the filling.
Large sausage skins
Hold the filling in a sealed casing so it can be boiled as a whole piece.

The step that matters

Poke holes in the stuffed skins. Air and steam trapped inside expand during boiling, so without holes the casings can burst. Pricking lets steam escape while the filling cooks through.

“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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