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Liver and Mushrooms

A dish of sautéed liver and bacon with mushrooms, thickened with flour and simmered in stock, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,536 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Liver and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Fry

  1. Fry the liver and bacon separately until cooked.

  2. Fry the mushrooms until golden.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine the liver, bacon, and mushrooms.

  2. Add the flour and stir well.

  3. Pour in the stock and simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Serve with fried bread.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Calves' liver
Provides the main meat, cooked tender in the stew.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, meaty flavour and moisture to the stew.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavours the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a thicker, smoother sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid that simmers everything together into a sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and stir well. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unevenly. Stirring it into the cooked ingredients before adding the stock helps it disperse, so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

“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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