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Sauce

Sauce Salmis a LA Minute

A quick sauce made from roasted goose or duck liver, shallots, oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sauce Salmis a LA Minute

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Crush the roasted and cold liver with a spoon.

  2. Mix in the finely chopped shallots, salt, pepper, oil, and lemon juice, and stir until well combined.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Liver + shallottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together268 recipes

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

  5. Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,375 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

Goose or duck liver
Forms the main body of the sauce, giving it a rich, creamy texture when crushed.
Shallots
Add a sharp, mild onion flavour that cuts through the richness of the liver.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, helping the crushed liver become smooth and spreadable.
Lemon juice
Brings acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness of the liver.

The step that matters

Crushing the liver while it is cold. Cold liver is firm enough to break into a fine, even texture with a spoon. Adding the oil and lemon juice afterwards lets the mixture emulsify into a smoother sauce rather than a lumpy paste.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pepper, 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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