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Liver Sauté with Pickle Sauce

Sautéed liver served with a pickle‑flavored sauce made from butter, flour, water, vinegar, capers or pickles, parsley, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Liver Sauté with Pickle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate saucepan, brown the butter and flour together over medium heat until golden.

  2. Slowly stir in the boiling water until smooth.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and capers or pickles to the sauce.

  5. Keep the sauce warm without cooking.

Cook the liver

  1. Melt lard in a frying pan until it is an inch deep and heat until smoking hot.

  2. Add parsley and onion to the lard and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Lay the sliced liver in the lard and turn constantly until slightly browned on both sides.

  4. The liver is done when firm to the touch.

  5. Transfer each piece of liver to the sauce, ensuring it is well coated.

Serve

  1. Arrange the liver pieces in a circle on a plate and pour the sauce over them.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 of the dish, browning on the outside while staying tender inside.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the pickle sauce its body.
Butter
Adds rich flavour and browning to the roux base of the sauce.
Capers or pickles
Add sharp acidity that cuts through the richness of the liver and sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce against the fatty liver.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce warm without cooking it further. Once the sauce has thickened, extended boiling can break it down or over-reduce it, and the liver can toughen if it is overcooked, so gentle heat keeps both smooth and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, liver, flour, parsley, vinegar, pepper, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, liver, flour, parsley, vinegar, pepper, capers. 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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