Name: Baked Liver
Ingredients: liver (quantity as needed); salt pork (bits); onion (bits); coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Baked Liver

Ingredients

liver (quantity as needed)
salt pork (bits)
onion (bits)
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Prepare the liver

Soak the liver in cold water.
Scald the liver in boiling water.
Slash the liver with a knife and insert bits of salt pork and onion.
Tie the liver together and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Bake and serve

Bake the liver like other meats.
Make a milk gravy.
Serve the gravy on the platter with the meat.

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.

Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,606 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Liver + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,420 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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, cooking to a tender, moist texture when baked.
Salt pork: Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the lean liver moist as it bakes.
Onion: Adds aromatic sweetness and flavor that penetrates the liver during baking.