Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Green Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flavourings
Wash the anchovies well and pound them in a mortar.
Boil the parsley (removing all stalks) until tender, then squeeze out the water.
Make the butter
Chop the parsley very fine and rub it through a sieve with the anchovies and 2 oz of fresh butter.
Serve
Serve on very thin toast, baked in the oven until dry and crisp.
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.
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Anchovies
- Adds salty, savoury depth that rounds out the butter.
- Butter
- Provides fat and richness, giving the spread its smooth, creamy body.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh herbal flavour and the green colour of the butter.
The step that matters
Boil the parsley until tender, then squeeze out the water. Brief boiling softens the parsley and helps keep its green colour. Squeezing out the water matters because leftover moisture would make the butter watery and loose instead of thick and spreadable.
“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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