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Liver Sauce

A sauce made from rabbit livers, butter, flour, milk, and water, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the livers

  1. Wash the livers.

  2. Boil the livers gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Chop the livers finely or rub them through a sieve.

  4. Season the liver pulp with pepper and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Mix the flour smoothly with the melted butter.

  3. Add the milk and water to the mixture and stir until it boils.

  4. Add the chopped liver to the sauce and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + rabbittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Liver + rabbittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: geraniol (rose, geranium).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk mixture so the sauce becomes body.
Milk and water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a pourable sauce.
Rabbit livers
Provide the main flavour and, once puréed, the body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the milk and water to the flour mixture and stir until it boils. Adding liquid to a smooth butter and flour paste and stirring constantly lets starch granules swell evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

“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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