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Sauce

Melted Butter or Parsley Sauce

A sauce made by melting butter with flour, adding water and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Melted Butter or Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub together the butter and flour in a small bowl.

  2. Boil the chopped parsley in water for 5 minutes, then squeeze out excess water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the butter-flour mixture and water.

  2. Heat over medium heat, stirring until it boils.

  3. Gradually add the parsley to the saucepan, stirring continuously.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel in the sauce.
Flour
Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-flour mixture constantly as it heats. Flour starch needs to be dispersed evenly in the liquid while it heats. Constant stirring keeps the starch from clumping and lets it thicken the sauce smoothly as it reaches a boil.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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