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Skate with Liver Sauce

A dish of skate pieces served with a sauce made from parsley, green onion, mushrooms, garlic, butter, flour, capers, anchovy, and bruised skate liver.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Skate with Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the skate

  1. Boil the pieces of skate until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine parsley, cibol, mushrooms, garlic, and butter; sauté for a few minutes.

  2. Add flour and stir well, then add more butter, capers, anchovy, and the bruised liver.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then moisten with gravy or water.

  4. Thicken the sauce over low heat until desired consistency.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Garlic + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Skate
Provides the main protein, which firms up as it cooks through in boiling water.
Flour
Thickens the butter and vegetable mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce and the sautéed aromatics.
Mushrooms
Add savoury, earthy depth and moisture to the sauce as they cook down.
Capers
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and liver.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce over low heat until desired consistency. Flour needs gentle heat and time to swell and thicken evenly. Higher heat can scorch the butter and cause lumps or a grainy texture.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, onion, mushroom, garlic, butter, flour, capers):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, onion, mushroom, garlic, butter, flour, capers. 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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