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Broiled Liver with Bacon

Broiled liver slices seasoned, coated in butter and flour, cooked over fire, served with crisp bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Broiled Liver with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak liver slices in cold water for at least 15 minutes to blanch.

  2. Drain and dry each piece with a dish towel.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then dip in melted butter and dust with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil liver for 10 minutes over a clear fire, avoiding charring.

  2. Transfer cooked liver to a hot platter.

  3. In a hot frying pan, cook thin slices of firm, cold bacon until crisp.

  4. Place a slice of bacon on each liver slice or arrange bacon around the platter.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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
Provides the main body of the dish; cooking it briefly keeps it tender rather than dry and tough.
Flour
Dusted on the buttered slices, it helps form a light browned crust during broiling.
Melted butter
Coats the slices to add richness and moisture and aid browning in the heat.
Bacon
Renders fat as it crisps, adding salty, smoky flavour and crunch to the rich liver.

The step that matters

Broil liver for 10 minutes over a clear fire, avoiding charring. Liver is lean and delicate, so high direct heat can scorch its surface before the interior is cooked. Steady, moderate heat cooks it through while keeping it moist and 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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