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Fried Liver, with Brown Sauce

Fried liver served with a brown sauce made from stock, Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fried Liver, with Brown Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Cover the liver slices with boiling water and let stand for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from water and wipe dry, then dredge with flour, salt, and pepper.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, cook the bacon until crispy, then add the liver and fry until brown on both sides.

  2. Place the liver and bacon on a hot dish.

  3. In the same pan, add 1 tablespoon of flour to the grease and stir until brown.

  4. Pour in the soup stock, Worcestershire sauce, and mushroom ketchup, adding salt to taste.

  5. Pour the sauce over the liver and serve.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Liver + mushroomtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, browned on the outside while staying tender inside.
Flour
Dry coating that browns in the frying fat and thickens the sauce.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the pan for frying the liver and browning the flour.
Soup stock
Liquid base of the brown sauce, carrying the flavor and thinning the roux.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds tangy, savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the fat. Flour must be stirred until evenly brown in the bacon grease before the stock goes in. Cooking it long enough removes raw starch taste and builds color and nutty flavor, and it thickens the sauce more smoothly when liquid is added gradually.

“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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