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Green Parsley

A pickled parsley preserved in a mixture of mace, nutmeg, eschalots, horseradish, white wine vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Green Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil parsley in water until bright green, then dry between soft cloths.

Make the pickle

  1. In a pot, combine mace, nutmeg, eschalots, horseradish, and white wine vinegar. Boil for 10-12 minutes and skim well.

Pack and seal

  1. Place parsley branches in jars and pour the pickle over them, ensuring they are well covered.

  2. The next day, top off with more pickle and cover with 1 inch of pure olive oil.

  3. Seal jars tightly with wetted bladder and then with soft leather. Store in a dry, airy room.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Nutmeg + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley branches
Main vegetable that becomes the pickled product, absorbing the flavour of the pickle.
White wine vinegar
Acid base of the pickle that preserves the parsley and carries the spices.
Horseradish
Provides sharp, pungent heat that flavours the pickle.
Pure olive oil
Forms a layer over the pickle that seals the jar from air.

The step that matters

Skimming the pickle after boiling. Boiling the spices and vinegar releases foam and impurities that would cloud the pickle and can spoil it, so skimming thoroughly keeps it clear and stable during storage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, horseradish, white wine, vinegar, parsley, olive):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, horseradish, white wine, vinegar, parsley, olive. 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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