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Sauce

Dutch Sauce

A sauce made with butter, elder or tarragon vinegar, parsley extract, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Dutch Sauce

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 ↓

Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the elder or tarragon vinegar and stir well.

  3. Incorporate the parsley extract and mix until combined.

  4. Add lemon juice if the sauce is green to prevent it from turning yellow.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Tarragon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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 richness and a smooth, rounded texture as the base of the sauce.
Elder or tarragon vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the buttery sauce.
Parsley extract
Adds herbal flavour and the green colour of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps keep the sauce green rather than yellow.

The step that matters

Adding lemon juice to a green sauce. Acid helps green herbs stay green by slowing the breakdown of chlorophyll, which otherwise lets the colour fade to yellow. Adding it when the sauce is green is what protects that colour.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Dillfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lemon. 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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