Skip to main content
Main

Liver Soup

A soup made with stock, ham, onion, liver, and seasonings, thickened with roux and served over croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the ham and onion in water until reduced by half.

Make the soup

  1. Chop the left-overs of liver and a little ham, then add to the stock.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Thicken the soup with brown roux.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup over croutons in a tureen.

  2. If available, mince and add a cold boiled, fried, or poached egg.

  3. Garnish with 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

Brown roux
Thickens the soup, giving it body and a richer, toasty colour.
Corned ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the broth while it simmers.
Liver
Contributes rich, meaty flavour and body to the soup.
Egg
Adds richness and soft texture when added as an optional garnish.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with brown roux. Roux must be cooked smooth and stirred in gradually, since lumps form when flour hits hot liquid all at once. Simmering afterward cooks out the raw flour taste and lets the starch thicken fully.

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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes