Electron scattering on liquid samples has been enabled recently by the
development of ultrathin liquid sheet technologies. The data treatment of
liquid-phase electron scattering has been mostly reliant on methodologies
developed for gas electron diffraction, in which theoretical inputs and
empirical fittings are often needed to account for the atomic form factor and
remove the inelastic scattering background. The accuracy and impact of these
theoretical and empirical inputs has not been benchmarked for liquid-phase
electron scattering data. In this work, we present an alternative data
treatment method that requires neither theoretical inputs nor empirical
fittings. The merits of this new method are illustrated through the retrieval
of real-space molecular structure from experimental electron scattering
patterns of liquid water, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, and
dichloromethane