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Sauce

Liver and Lemon Sauce for Poultry

A sauce made from minced fowl liver, lemon rind, butter, and lemon dice, seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Liver and Lemon Sauce for Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and lemon

  1. Wash the liver.

  2. Boil the liver for a few minutes.

  3. Peel the lemon very thin.

  4. Remove the white part and seeds.

  5. Cut the lemon into small dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Mince the liver and a small amount of lemon rind very finely.

  2. Add the minced liver and lemon rind to the melted butter.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Add the diced lemon.

  5. Heat gradually without boiling to prevent the butter from separating.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Liver + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together768 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Provides the main savoury flavour and body of the sauce once minced finely.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrance from the rind, with juicy bright pieces from the diced flesh.
Melted butter
Supplies fat for richness and a smooth, glossy base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat gradually without boiling. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. Strong heat can break it, so the fat separates and the sauce turns greasy and grainy. Gentle, gradual heating keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter. 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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