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Liver and Parsley Sauce

A sauce made by blanching, mincing liver and parsley, then mixing into melted butter.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the parsley and liver separately.

  2. Mince the parsley and liver.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir the minced liver and parsley into the melted butter.

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 savory body and rich flavour of the sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green note that cuts the richness.
Butter
Carries the flavours and gives the sauce a smooth, rich mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Blanching the parsley and liver separately. Blanching briefly in boiling water softens the parsley and firms the liver so they can be minced cleanly. Blanching too long can dull the parsley's bright green colour and make the liver tough, so timing matters.

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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