British 'Liquor' Sauce Is The Buttery, Garlicky Topping Your Mashed Potatoes Need

Entering a classic pie-and-mash shop in East London inevitably brings you face to face with a green-ish liquid lovingly ladled over a hearty minced beef, comfort-food pie, accompanied by mashed potatoes. The liquid isn't an afterthought or a minor ingredient, but a core component of British pie and mash. It's called liquor sauce, but has nothing to do with alcohol. It's instead a thick parsley-centric gravy traditionally made with jellied or stewed eels — but in modern times, more often featuring a base of fish or vegetable stock. 

This phenomenon sprang from busy dockland areas of East London in the mid-1800s, where working-class laborers and families needed affordable, energy-packed meals for long working days. Though eel-eating has diminished in the East End, the well-loved sauce remains. The savory minced beef pies now include options for chicken, pork, or lamb, served side-by-side on the same plate as the mashed potatoes. Liquor sauce splashes over it all in a glorious puddle of savory, umami-style gravy. 

Pie and mash with liquor sauce is a Cockney (East Ender) staple, though you'll also find it tucked into shops and cafes in nearby regions such as Essex, which lies about 30 miles outside London. The cherished meal still thrives in fishing villages such as Leigh-on-Sea, where I spent childhood summers at Wendy's Cafe, helping my grandparents peel potatoes, chop parsley, and make crust for the heart- and tummy-warming pies. These small shops perch up and down the seafronts and into Southend, perfect for a day trip from London. 

Parsley gravy may sound odd to the uninitiated, as does a liquor sauce with no liquor. It's certainly something worth trying, but you may need to make it yourself. At its core, liquor sauce is simply a parsley-infused roux made by first whisking flour and hot melted butter into hot eel broth. By all means, feel free to use fish or vegetable stock instead. Once the sauce has blended and thickened, you'll add the crucial ingredient, finely chopped fresh parsley, resulting in that brilliant emerald color and light herbal tones. For a garlicky version, add pureed garlic cloves. And, of course, you don't need the pie to experience liquor sauce — just pour it lavishly over a plate of mashed potatoes. 

For old-time authenticity, you could swap out the butter for suet, which is a type of animal fat often used in sweet or savory British and Scottish puddings, such as steak-and-kidney, haggis, and Christmas puddings. If you're following a U.K. recipe for making the actual pies, it may call for suet in the pie crust anyway. 

The East End has gradually gentrified, but there will always be a place in neighborhood hearts for pie and mash drenched in liquor sauce. In fact, a U.K. lawmaker in 2024 began the process of making the sentiment live forever, seeking protected status with a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed label — sauce and all. For more on saucy U.K. cooking, check out our guide to 17 British sauces and condiments you should know.