Name: Liver Sauce for Fish
Ingredients: liver; butter; cayenne pepper; lemon juice; catsup (optional); anchovy (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Liver Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Scald the liver and remove all fibers and specky parts.
Pound the liver in a mortar with a small bit of butter.
Boil the pounded liver with melted butter.
Season with cayenne pepper and add a squeeze of lemon juice.
Optionally, mix in catsup or anchovy to taste.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together199 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,080 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).