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Sauce

Green Dutch Sauce

A green sauce made by blending parsley into béchamel and adding lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Green Dutch Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the green sauce

  1. Wash the young parsley leaves and place them in a mortar while still wet.

  2. Pound the parsley to a pulp and squeeze out the juice into the béchamel sauce until it reaches a desired green color.

Finish and serve

  1. Simmer the sauce gently over low heat.

  2. Before serving, add the strained lemon juice and mix well.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Béchamel sauce
Forms the creamy base that the parsley juice colors and flavors.
Young parsley leaves
Supply the green color and fresh herbal flavor when pounded and squeezed for juice.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that lifts the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce gently over low heat. Parsley juice added to a hot sauce can turn dull and olive-brown if overheated, and a gentle simmer keeps the sauce from scorching or breaking while the color stays bright.

“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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