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Melted Butter

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Melted Butter

Why it works: Chervil and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Melted Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg yolk and lemon juice, strain, and stir into melted butter off the heat before serving.

  2. Use milk or a mix of milk and water instead of water for a richer sauce.

  3. Combine the egg yolk with cream and stir into melted butter off the heat before serving.

  4. Add minced fennel, chervil, parsley, or chopped capers just before serving.

  5. Brown the butter and flour, then add water and season with Worcestershire sauce, catsup, pepper, and spices to taste.

  6. Stir in anchovy sauce into plain melted butter after it's made.

  7. Boil chopped onions, shallots, and garlic in milk with whole pepper, mace, cloves, and parsley for flavor, then strain and use the milk instead of water for the sauce.

  8. Serve the sauce over boiled fillets of soles for a delicious dish.

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. Chervil + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chervil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Fennel + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, milk, cream, chervil, parsley, capers):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, milk, cream, chervil, parsley, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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