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Parsley Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Strip the leaves from the stalks of fresh green parsley and chop them slightly.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter until hot.

  3. Stir the chopped parsley into the hot butter until it looks very green.

  4. For improved appearance, stir in some spinach juice before serving.

  5. Serve with boiled fowl, rabbits, or fish.

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. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Butter + spinachtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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