Name: Lemon and Liver Sauce
Ingredients: 1 Lemon or Seville Orange; Liver (fresh, from poultry or rabbit); 2 tablespoons Butter; Optional: ½ cup Bacon (minced), juice of ½ Lemon, grated peel of Lemon, 1 teaspoon Tarragon or Chili Vinegar, 1 tablespoon White Wine, a pinch of Mace, Nutmeg, or Allspice, 1 Eschalot (pounded), a few leaves of Tarragon or Basil, Anchovy or Ketchup, Cayenne

Why it works: Lemon and liver work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 768 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

1 Lemon or Seville Orange
Liver (fresh, from poultry or rabbit)
2 tablespoons Butter
Optional: ½ cup Bacon (minced), juice of ½ Lemon, grated peel of Lemon, 1 teaspoon Tarragon or Chili Vinegar, 1 tablespoon White Wine, a pinch of Mace, Nutmeg, or Allspice, 1 Eschalot (pounded), a few leaves of Tarragon or Basil, Anchovy or Ketchup, Cayenne

Directions

Prepare the lemon

Remove the rind of the lemon or orange as thinly as possible, avoiding the white pith.
Cut off the white pith and slice the lemon into thin rounds, then remove the seeds.
Cut the slices into small squares and mince a little of the peel finely.

Make the sauce

Add the lemon squares and minced peel to the prepared liver in melted butter.
Warm the mixture 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Lemon + livertop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together768 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,197 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Liver + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned 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

Lemon: Supplies the sharp acidity and fragrant oils that flavour the sauce.
Liver: Forms the body of the sauce, giving it richness and a soft texture.
Butter: Melts to carry flavour and add richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture without boiling. Liver is delicate and can turn grainy, dry or curdled when it gets too hot. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and the butter emulsified, while the lemon stays bright.

“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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Lemon and Liver Sauce