Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Livers En Brochettes

Skewered chicken livers, bacon, and mushrooms, broiled and coated in butter and breadcrumbs, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Livers En Brochettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the bacon in hot water for 2 minutes.

  2. Fry the bacon until light brown.

  3. Fry the livers and mushrooms in butter briefly.

Assemble and cook

  1. Thread a mushroom, a slice of bacon, and a liver onto a skewer, alternating until all ingredients are used.

  2. Pour melted butter over the skewers and roll them in bread crumbs.

  3. Broil the skewers for a few minutes over high heat.

  4. Sprinkle lemon juice over the brochettes and serve hot.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the main meaty filling, cooking quickly to a tender texture when fried briefly.
Bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that bastes the livers as it renders during frying.
Butter
Carries flavour and helps the bread crumbs brown when the skewers are broiled.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns under the broiler.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and bacon flavours.

The step that matters

Broil briefly over high heat. Livers are delicate and overcook quickly, turning dry and grainy. A short, hot broil browns the crumb coating while keeping the centre moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, liver, mushroom, butter, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes