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Sauce Beurre Fondu

A simple sauce of melted butter, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce Beurre Fondu

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the butter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Let it rest for a few minutes.

  3. Pour it into another saucepan, decanting it.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat it well, then remove from heat.

  2. Mix in the salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

  3. Serve in a warm sauceboat.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Provides the rich fat and flavour that forms the body of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Decanting the melted butter. Melted butter separates into clear butterfat, milky water and milk solids. Pouring off only the clear fat leaves the solids and water behind, so the sauce stays smooth and clear rather than cloudy.

“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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