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Chicken, Sauce for Boiled

A sauce made from boiled chicken livers, herbs, anchovies, egg, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Chicken, Sauce for Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Boil the livers with thyme and parsley until cooked.

  2. Drain the livers and pound them in a mortar with anchovies, pepper, salt, and lemon zest.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the egg white and hard-boiled yolks to the mixture.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the mixture and transfer it to a saucepan.

  3. Add melted butter and stir constantly until the sauce thickens, about 30 minutes.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Livers
Provide the main body and savory flavor of the sauce when pounded smooth.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and help bind the sauce into a smooth, thick texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a silky mouthfeel as it thickens.
Egg white
Adds body and helps thicken the sauce as it is heated.
Anchovies
Add salty, savory depth that enhances the flavor of the livers.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich livers and butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce as it thickens. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the egg proteins from overheating and curdling, which would leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, parsley, pepper, lemon, egg, 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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