Capillary wave fluctuations blur the inherent structure of liquid surfaces in computer simulations. The intrinsic sampling method subtracts capillary wave fluctuations and yields the intrinsic surface structure, leading to a generic picture of the liquid surface. The most relevant magnitude of the method is the surface layer density n s that may be consistently determined from different properties: the layering structure of the intrinsic density profiles, the turnover rate for surface layer particles, and the hydrodynamic damping rate of capillary waves. The good agreement among these procedures provides evidence for the physical consistency of the surface layering hypothesis, as an inherent physical property of the liquid surfaces. The dependence of the surface compactness, roughness, and exchange rate with temperature is analyzed for several molecular interaction models.