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Sauce

Liver Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from liver, butter, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and optional catsup or anchovy, used for fish.

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 ↓

Liver Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Scald the liver and remove all fibers and specky parts.

  2. Pound the liver in a mortar with a small bit of butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the pounded liver with melted butter.

  2. Season with cayenne pepper and add a squeeze of lemon juice.

  3. Optionally, add catsup or anchovy to taste.

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. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a rich, savory base once pounded and boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver and balances its heaviness.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory saltiness and umami if used, rounding out the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the pounded liver with melted butter. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen and grain the liver proteins and cause the butter to separate, leaving a gritty, greasy sauce. Keep the heat gentle and stir until the mixture is smooth and evenly combined.

“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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