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Roasted Calf's Liver Stuffed

A roasted calf's liver stuffed with minced parboiled liver, bacon, herbs, spices, and breadcrumbs, served hot with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Roasted Calf's Liver Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Make a hole in the liver lengthwise, but do not cut all the way through.

  2. Fill the opening with forcemeat made from the minced parboiled liver, fat bacon, sweet herbs, spice, bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  3. Lard the liver well with fat bacon and dust it with flour.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast the liver at 400°F (200°C), basting it well with butter.

  2. Serve hot with gravy sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together731 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 and carries the stuffing while roasting.
Fat bacon
Melts during roasting, adding moisture and richness to the lean liver.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together inside the liver.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the surface brown during basting.

The step that matters

Roast the liver at 400°F (200°C), basting it well with butter. Liver is lean and dries out quickly, so regular basting with butter keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly. Overcooking toughens liver and makes it grainy, so it should be served while still hot and 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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