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Lemon and Liver Sauce

A sauce made from fowl or rabbit liver, lemon, melted butter, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon and Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and score the liver.

  2. Blanch the liver for five minutes.

  3. Cut half a lemon into small slices, removing all the white and seeds.

  4. Mince a quarter of the lemon rind and the liver finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare ½ cup of melted butter.

  2. Add the minced liver and lemon to the butter.

  3. Season with a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Heat gradually without boiling, then serve.

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

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

  2. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Liver + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together768 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
Provides the main savory flavour and rich body of the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrant aroma from the rind and juice.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, flowing texture.

The step that matters

Heat gradually without boiling. Boiling can make melted butter separate and make the liver turn tough or grainy. Gentle, gradual heat keeps the sauce smooth and the liver tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, butter. 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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