Name: Chestnuts with Parsley Sauce
Ingredients: chestnuts; parsley sauce

Why it works: Chestnut and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chestnuts with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

chestnuts
parsley sauce

Directions

Cut a small piece off each chestnut to prevent bursting.
Place the chestnuts in cold water and boil rapidly for 25 minutes.
Remove the husk and skins from the chestnuts.
Prepare a good parsley sauce.
Heat the chestnuts in the sauce or pour the sauce over them before serving.

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.

Chestnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chestnut + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together255 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).