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Sauce

Liver Sauce

A sauce made from finely chopped livers, herbs, and spices, simmered with wine and stock, then thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Liver Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver mixture

  1. Chop the livers very small with parsley, scallions, tarragon leaves, and shallots.

  2. Soak the mixture in a little butter over low heat.

  3. Pound the mixture, adding cullis stock, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Make and finish the sauce

  1. Boil with ⅔ cup of red wine, coriander, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Reduce and strain the sauce.

  3. Thicken with a bit of butter rolled in flour.

  4. Serve in a sauceboat.

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. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Livers of poultry or game
Provide the main body and rich, deep flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with flour it thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled into butter and stirred in.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, and reduces to concentrate the sauce's flavour.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic onion flavour to the liver base.

The step that matters

Reduce and strain the sauce. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid, while straining removes the fine liver solids and any stringy bits so the sauce is smooth. Boiling too hard or too long can make it overly salty or intense.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, parsley, tarragon, shallot, butter, pepper, red wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, parsley, tarragon, shallot, butter, pepper, red wine. 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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