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Liver Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, water, thick cream, anchovy, soy sauce, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter with the flour.

  2. Add water and melt the mixture.

  3. Stir in the thick cream and chopped anchovy.

  4. Heat over the fire until it boils.

  5. Add the soy sauce for color.

  6. Add salt and juice from half a lemon, stirring well to prevent curdling.

  7. Transfer to a sauce tureen.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + anchovytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together798 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Anchovy + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and water into a stable base for the sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Anchovy
Adds a savory, salty depth of flavor in small amounts.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the lemon juice carefully. Acid can cause dairy proteins in cream to curdle when heated, so stirring well while adding the lemon helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, anchovy):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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