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Chicken Liver Sandwiches

Chicken livers simmered in stock and butter, mashed into a paste, spread on white bread, garnished with lemon and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Liver Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the livers

  1. In a pot, simmer the chicken livers in stock or water and butter until thoroughly cooked, about 3 hours.

  2. Add the bay leaf, garlic, lemon rind, cloves, black pepper, red pepper, and salt to the pot.

  3. Continue simmering until the moisture is cooked out.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mash the cooked livers into a soft paste using a mortar or a spoon.

  2. Spread the liver paste on rounds of white bread.

  3. Garnish with lemon slices and watercress.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Chicken + garlictop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken livers
Provide the main body and rich flavour of the spread once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the liver paste a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that mellows during the long simmer.
White bread
Serves as the base that carries the liver paste as a sandwich.

The step that matters

Simmering until the moisture is cooked out. Liver held too long in liquid stays wet and loose, so the paste won't spread well. Cooking off the moisture concentrates the flavour and firms the texture, while overcooking can make liver grainy and dry.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chicken, liver, garlic, lemon, pepper, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chicken, liver, garlic, lemon, pepper, bread. 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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