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Brown Stew of Liver

A stew of liver cooked with onion, fat, flour, water, pepper, salt, ketchup, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Brown Stew of Liver

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak the liver in cold saltwater for 30 minutes, then wipe and cut into 1‑inch square pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion in dripping until browned, then remove the onion.

  2. Add the browned flour to the fat and stir to make a smooth roux, gradually adding 1 cup of boiling water.

  3. Transfer the roux to a saucepan, add the liver and another cup of hot water, cover, and stew slowly for 1 hour or until tender.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper, salt, parsley, and tomato ketchup, then serve in a deep dish.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

Liver
Is the main protein, becoming tender as it stews slowly in the liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking fat into a smooth roux that gives the stew body.
Dripping
Carries the flavour of the onion and helps brown the flour.
Onion
Browned first in the fat to add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the finished stew.

The step that matters

Stewing the liver slowly. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the liver tender; high heat or overcooking toughens its proteins and makes it dry and grainy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, onion, flour, pepper, ketchup, parsley):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, onion, flour, pepper, ketchup, 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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