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Liver Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lime and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pare the rind of the lime or sour orange thinly, avoiding the white part.

  2. Remove the white from the lime, slice it thinly, and cut into small squares.

  3. Add the lime squares and minced peel to prepared liver in melted butter, warming gently without boiling.

  4. Soak the rice in milk with onion and pepper until tender, then strain through a sieve into a clean pot.

  5. If too thick, add a little cream or milk to achieve desired consistency.

  6. Fry diced onions until golden brown, then moisten with spinach sauce or veal gravy, adding pepper and salt.

  7. Just before serving, mix in a spoonful of mustard.

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. Lime + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lime + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, onion, pepper, butter, cream, mustard):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, onion, pepper, butter, cream, mustard. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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