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Sauce

Lemon and Liver Sauce

A sauce made from lemon peel, lemon squares, fresh liver, butter, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon and Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemon

  1. Pare the rind of the lemon as thin as possible, avoiding the white part.

  2. Remove all the white from the lemon and slice it into small squares.

  3. Pick out the seeds from the lemon slices.

  4. Mince the lemon peel very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the lemon squares and minced peel with the prepared liver.

  2. Add the mixture to the melted butter and warm it together without boiling.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + livertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the sauce.
Lemon
Supplies sharp acidity and fragrant oil from the peel, cutting the richness.
Liver
Forms the main body of the sauce and gives it its savory flavor.
Parsley leaves
Adds a fresh, green herbal aroma that balances the rich liver and butter.

The step that matters

Warm together without boiling. Boiling can overheat the butter, causing it to separate, and can toughen the liver's proteins, leaving the sauce grainy instead of smooth. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion stable and the texture tender.

“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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