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Parsley Sauce

A sauce made from minced parsley, capers, vinegar, onions, butter, stock, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Pick, clean, and mince the parsley, then place it in a bowl with the chopped capers and vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the onions and fry them in butter until soft.

  2. Add the white stock to the onions, ensuring it is free of fat.

  3. Thicken the mixture with grated bread crumbs, adding salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Allow to simmer until the sauce reaches a sufficient consistency.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the minced parsley and capers, and mix well 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.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Capers + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Provides the fresh, green flavour that defines the sauce.
Onions
Soften in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying the onions.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that forms the body of the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the stock into a sauce with a smoother body.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that contrasts with the parsley.

The step that matters

Simmering the thickened sauce. Bread crumbs keep absorbing liquid and starch swells as the sauce heats, so it can turn too thick or pasty if simmered too long. Simmer gently and stop once it coats a spoon.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, capers, vinegar, butter, pepper, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, capers, vinegar, butter, pepper, bread. 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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