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Liver Sauce

A sauce made from boiled fowl liver, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, served over fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver

  1. Wash the fowl liver thoroughly and boil it in ½ cup of water for four minutes.

  2. Bruise the liver and rub it through a sieve, adding some of the boiling water.

Make the sauce

  1. Dust the butter with flour in a pan and add the cream.

  2. Melt the butter and cream while shaking the pan.

  3. Once hot, add the liver, pepper, salt, lemon peel, and nutmeg; heat thoroughly.

  4. Pour the sauce around the fowl and serve with parsley and butter in a sauce-tureen.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl liver
Forms the main body of the sauce once boiled and pushed through a sieve.
Butter
Carries flavour and gives the sauce richness and a smooth, glossy texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that holds together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Rub the liver through a sieve while it is still hot. Pushing the cooked liver through a sieve breaks it into fine particles, giving a smooth sauce. Liver that cools and stiffens becomes harder to press and leaves a grainier texture.

“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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