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Goose Liver with Mushroom Sauce

A goose liver sautéed in goose fat, served with a mushroom sauce made from onion, celery, garlic, peppers, bay leaf, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Goose Liver with Mushroom Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Soak the goose liver in salt water for at least 1 hour.

  2. Remove the liver, wipe it dry, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the liver in flour.

Cook the liver and sauce

  1. Heat goose fat in a pan and fry the liver until golden brown.

  2. In another pan, combine onion, cloves, celery, whole peppers, bay leaf, and mushrooms.

  3. Cover and stew the mixture for a few minutes.

  4. Add lemon juice to the sauce 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Clove + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose liver
Forms the rich, tender main element that is seared to a golden crust.
Flour
Coats the liver so it browns evenly and develops a crisp surface when fried.
Goose fat
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the liver.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce as they stew.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the floured liver until golden brown. Flour and fat brown through the Maillard reaction, which needs steady, moderate heat. Too hot and the outside burns before the inside is cooked; too cool and the liver steams and turns grey instead of crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pepper, flour, clove, celery, mushroom, lemon):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, flour, clove, celery, mushroom, lemon. 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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