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Skate, with Liver Sauce

A skate fillet served with a sauce made from its liver, mushrooms, parsley, anchovy, capers, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,308 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Skate, with Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the skate

  1. Boil the skate until cooked.

  2. Skim the skate and serve on a hot dish without a napkin.

Prepare the liver

  1. Boil the liver of the skate for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the liver.

  3. Bruise the liver in a mortar.

  4. Moisten the liver with a little of the cooking liquor.

  5. Rub the liver through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt a slice of fresh butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped mushrooms, parsley, and minced garlic (if using) to the butter.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and stir well.

  4. Add the prepared liver, anchovy flesh, bruised capers, and stock to the saucepan.

  5. Stir the sauce over the heat for a few minutes.

  6. Add more thickening if necessary.

  7. Pour the sauce over the skate before serving.

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. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of the skate
Breaks down into a smooth, rich base that thickens and flavours the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Fresh butter
Carries the mushrooms and aromatics and adds richness to the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth so the sauce tastes deeper without tasting fishy.
Stock
Provides the liquid that loosens the liver and flour into a pourable sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and body to the sauce as they soften in the butter.

The step that matters

Sprinkle the flour and stir well. Flour must be stirred into the melted butter before the liquid goes in, so it cooks out and thickens smoothly. Lumps form if it is added to liquid unevenly.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, butter, mushroom, parsley, garlic, flour, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter, mushroom, parsley, garlic, flour, anchovy. 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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