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Liver and Parsley Sauce

A sauce made by boiling liver, mixing with parsley, and warming in melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the liver

  1. Boil the liver in 5 tablespoons of water for 5 minutes.

  2. Chop the liver finely or pound it in the cooking liquid and strain through a sieve.

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley leaves in a small amount of water with 1 teaspoon of salt, then drain and mince finely.

Combine and warm

  1. Mix the minced parsley with the liver and warm in 1/4 cup of melted butter 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. 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 body and rich flavour of the sauce as it is pureed and strained.
Melted butter
Adds fat and a smooth, glossy texture to the finished sauce.
Parsley leaves
Contributes fresh, green aroma and a herbal flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warm without boiling. Once the butter and liver mixture boils, the emulsion can separate and the texture turns grainy and greasy, so it should be warmed gently.

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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