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Liver and Parsley Sauce

A sauce made from boiled liver, parsley, 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 liver

  1. Wash the liver thoroughly and boil it in 5 tablespoons of water for 5 minutes.

  2. Chop or pound the liver in the boiling liquid and strain it through a sieve.

Prepare the parsley

  1. Wash the parsley leaves and boil them in a little water with 1 teaspoon of salt.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the minced parsley with the liver and add it to 1/4 pint 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. 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
Provides the main body and rich, savoury flavour of the sauce once puréed and strained.
Parsley leaves
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma and green flavour that brightens the rich butter.
Melted butter
Supplies fat and smoothness, carrying the liver and parsley flavours and giving the sauce a silky texture.

The step that matters

Warm the mixture gently without boiling. High heat can cause the butter to separate and the egg-free protein-rich liver purée to curdle or turn grainy, so the sauce stays smooth and emulsified.

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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