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Sauce

Liver and Lemon Sauce, for Poultry

A sauce made from fowl liver, lemon, salt, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Liver and Lemon Sauce, for Poultry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liver and lemon

  1. Wash the liver.

  2. Boil the liver for a few minutes.

  3. Peel the lemon very thin. Remove the white part and seeds from the lemon.

  4. Cut the lemon into small dice.

  5. Mince the liver and a small quantity of the lemon rind very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Add these ingredients to 1 cup of smoothly made melted butter. Season with a little salt.

  2. Add the cut lemon.

  3. Heat gradually 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Liver + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together768 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of a fowl
Breaks down into the minced base that gives the sauce its body and rich flavour.
Melted butter
Forms the smooth fat base that carries the flavours and gives a silky texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrant citrus aroma that cuts through the richness of the butter and liver.

The step that matters

Heat gradually without boiling. Butter emulsions and egg-free sauces can separate or turn grainy when overheated. Gentle heat keeps the butter smooth and the sauce cohesive.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Grapefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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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