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Sauce

Liver Sauce Fob Fish

A sauce made from fish liver, flour, broth, butter, cayenne pepper, anchovy essence or soy sauce or ketchup, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Liver Sauce Fob Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the liver of the fish until cooked.

  2. Pound the liver in a mortar with flour.

  3. Stir the mixture into the broth or cooking liquid, or melted butter.

  4. Add cayenne pepper and essence of anchovy, soy sauce, or ketchup.

  5. Bring to a boil and strain through a sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice or diced lemon before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Liver + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together199 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Liver of the fish
Breaks down into a rich, thick body that gives the sauce its main flavour and texture.
Flour
Thickens the liver mixture so it binds into a smooth sauce.
Broth or cooking liquid from the fish
Provides the liquid base that loosens the thickened mixture into a pourable sauce.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and rounded flavour.
Lemon juice or diced lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich liver flavour.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil and strain through a sieve. Boiling thickens the flour-starch mixture fully, while straining removes lumps and fibrous bits so the sauce turns smooth. Stop once it is thick enough to coat a spoon.

“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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