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Liver Soup

A soup made from liver, ham, onion, and water, thickened with roux and served over croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Liver Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the ham or ham-bone with the sliced onion in 2 quarts of water until reduced by half.

  2. Chop the left-over liver and a little ham, then add to the stock.

  3. Season the soup to taste and thicken with brown roux.

Add the garnishes and serve

  1. Pour the soup over a handful of croutons in a tureen.

  2. If available, mince the boiled heart and add it to the soup.

  3. Chop any left-over fried bacon and add it for flavor.

  4. If you have a cold boiled, fried, or poached egg, mince it and add it to the soup.

  5. Season with pepper and minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + livertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,420 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Ham or ham-bone
Gives the stock its savoury, salty meaty flavour as it simmers.
Left-over liver
Adds a rich, dense meaty body and flavour to the soup.
Brown roux
Thickens the stock and gives it a toasted, nutty colour and flavour.
Onion
Releases sweetness and aromatic depth into the simmering stock.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, liver, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, liver, egg, pepper, parsley. 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.

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