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Sauce

Sauce Salmis a LA Minute

A quick sauce made by crushing cold roasted goose or duck liver with shallots, salt, pepper, oil, and lemon juice.

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 cold roasted liver with a spoon.

  2. Mix in the finely chopped shallots, salt, pepper, oil, and lemon juice.

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

Liver of a goose or duck
Provides the main rich flavour and body of the sauce once crushed.
Shallots
Add a mild sharp aroma that cuts through the richness of the liver.
Oil
Adds fat that loosens the crushed liver into a smoother, spreadable texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver flavour.

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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