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Liver and Parsley Sauce

A sauce made from rabbit, parsley, water, salt, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Liver and Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rabbit

  1. Boil the rabbit in 5 tablespoons of water for 5 minutes.

  2. Chop or pound the rabbit finely, using some of the cooking liquid, and strain through a sieve.

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley leaves in a small amount of water with 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Drain the parsley on a sieve and mince it finely.

Combine and warm

  1. Combine the minced parsley with the rabbit and mix in ¼ cup of melted butter.

  2. Warm the mixture gently without boiling.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Rabbit + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,448 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Rabbit + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

What each ingredient does

Rabbit
Forms the body of the sauce once cooked, chopped or pounded and strained to a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Parsley leaves
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture gently without boiling. Butter emulsified into a meat and herb mixture can separate or turn greasy if overheated. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rabbit, butter):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rabbit, butter. 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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