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Sauce

Liver and Parsley Sauce, for Poultry

A sauce made from minced fowl liver, parsley, and melted butter, boiled briefly for poultry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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, for Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and parsley

  1. Wash and score the liver.

  2. Boil the liver for a few minutes, then mince it very fine.

  3. Blanch or scald a small bunch of parsley, then chop it to fill a tablespoon.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the minced liver and chopped parsley with the melted butter.

  2. Let the mixture just boil, then 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  2. Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of a fowl
Provides the rich, savoury body that forms the base of the sauce.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma and herbal flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Carries the minced liver and parsley and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture just boil, then serve. Boiling the butter-based sauce gently, without vigorous overheating, helps it stay smooth and prevents the butterfat from separating and turning greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, 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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