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Liver Sauce for Fish

A sauce made from boiled fish liver, flour, broth, butter, parsley, cayenne, anchovy essence, and optional lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Liver Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the liver of the fish.

  2. Pound it in a mortar with a little flour.

  3. Stir it into some broth, the liquor the fish was boiled in, or melted butter.

  4. Add parsley, cayenne, and essence of anchovy (or soy or ketchup).

  5. Bring to a boil.

  6. Rub through a sieve.

  7. Optionally, add lemon juice or diced lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fish liver
Forms the thick, rich body of the sauce once pounded and sieved.
Flour
Thickens the liver mixture so the sauce holds its body.
Broth or fish cooking liquor
Thins the mixture to a pourable sauce and carries savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Essence of anchovy
Adds deep savory, salty flavor that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Rub through a sieve. Pounded liver contains fibers and lumps that stay coarse unless forced through a sieve. Sieving gives the sauce its smooth, even 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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