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Calf's Liyer and Bacon

A dish of thinly sliced calf liver cooked in bacon fat, served with a lemon‑flavored 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 Liyer and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the liver into thin slices.

  2. Cut the same number of bacon slices as liver slices.

Cook

  1. Fry the bacon first and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Fry the liver in the bacon fat, seasoning with pepper and salt, and dredging with a little flour. Turn the liver occasionally to prevent burning.

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

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour off the bacon fat, add a small piece of butter, a little flour, lemon juice, and water. Bring to a boil and pour the sauce in the middle 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Liver
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, browned texture when fried.
Bacon
Its fat is used to fry the liver, adding savory flavor and aroma.
Flour
Dredging coats the liver so it browns, and a little thickens the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and fat in the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the liver. Liver turns dry and grainy when overcooked, and it can burn on the surface before the center is done. Turning it occasionally and keeping heat moderate helps it brown evenly while staying 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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