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Preserve

Liver Sauce

A sauce made by boiling fish liver, pounding with flour, and seasoning with parsley, cayenne pepper, catsup or soy sauce, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the liver of the fish.

  2. Pound the liver in a mortar with a little flour, then stir it into the liquor the fish was boiled in.

  3. Add chopped parsley, cayenne pepper, catsup or soy sauce, and a squeeze of lemon juice, mix well, 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of fish
Forms the body of the sauce, giving it a rich, smooth texture when pounded.
A little flour
Helps bind the pounded liver so it thickens the liquor into a sauce.
Liquor from boiled fish
Serves as the flavourful liquid base that the liver is stirred into.
Catsup or soy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salt-like seasoning to the sauce.
Squeeze of lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavour.

The step that matters

Pound the liver with the flour before stirring it into the liquor. Pounding breaks the liver into a fine paste and mixing it with flour first helps it disperse evenly, so the sauce avoids lumps and thickens smoothly.

“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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