Name: To Make Liver-and-parsley Sauce
Ingredients: 1 rabbit's liver; 2 tablespoons water; 1/3 the weight of the liver in parsley leaves; 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1/4 pint melted butter; optional: grated lemon peel or lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Make Liver-and-parsley Sauce

Ingredients

1 rabbit's liver
2 tablespoons water
1/3 the weight of the liver in parsley leaves
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
1/4 pint melted butter
optional: grated lemon peel or lemon juice

Directions

Prepare the liver

Boil the rabbit's liver in 2 tablespoons of water for 5 minutes.
Mince the liver and bruise it in a mortar with a little of the boiling liquid, then rub the mixture through a sieve.

Prepare the parsley

In boiling water, cook the parsley leaves with 1 teaspoon of salt until tender.
Squeeze the parsley dry and mince it finely.

Combine and serve

Mix the minced parsley with the liver.
Stir the mixture into 1/4 pint of melted butter and warm it without boiling.
Serve hot, optionally adding grated lemon peel or a squeeze of 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Rabbit + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together626 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Rabbit + livertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together233 recipes

Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,448 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit's liver: Forms the smooth, rich body of the sauce once boiled and sieved.
Parsley leaves: Adds fresh flavour and a green colour that cuts the richness of the liver.
Melted butter: Adds fat and silky moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, pourable texture.

The step that matters

Warm without boiling. Once the butter and liver mixture boils, the emulsion can separate and turn greasy and grainy, so it should only be warmed gently.

“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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To Make Liver-and-parsley Sauce