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Liver with Sauce

A dish of liver cooked in a sauce of onions, flour, broth, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Liver with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat a pan and add chopped onions.

  2. Cook for 1 minute, then pour off most of the fat.

  3. Add flour and mix well.

  4. Pour in broth or water and boil until thickened.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, vinegar, sugar, and mustard.

Serve

  1. Heat until hot and pour over the liver to 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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Liver
The main ingredient, which the sauce is served over.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce as it boils.
Onions
Softens and adds savoury sweetness to the base of the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the liver.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Add flour and mix well. Flour must be evenly dispersed in the hot fat before liquid goes in, otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, liver):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, vinegar, sugar, mustard, liver. 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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