Name: Liver Sauce for Fish
Ingredients: liver of fish; flour; broth or fish cooking liquid; melted butter; parsley; cayenne pepper; essence of anchovy; lime juice or lemon (diced)

Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Liver Sauce for Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the liver of the fish.
Pound the liver in a mortar with a little flour.
Stir the mixture into some broth, fish cooking liquid, or melted butter.
Add parsley, a few grains of cayenne, and essence of anchovy.
Bring the mixture to a boil and rub it through a sieve.
Serve warm, adding lime juice or diced lemon if desired.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,491 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + limetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together547 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together637 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, fish, flour, butter, parsley, pepper, anchovy):

Lemonfits better
Limethe original
Plumfits less well
Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, fish, flour, butter, parsley, pepper, anchovy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.