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Sauce

Sauce Persil

A parsley and breadcrumb sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sauce Persil

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine equal parts parsley and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the mixture with broth.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and vinegar, then stir over low heat until smooth and hot, but do not boil.

  4. Serve.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Provides the main herbal flavour and green colour of the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Soak up broth and thicken the mixture into a spoonable body.
Broth
Moistens the crumbs and loosens the mixture into a smooth sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the herbs.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Stirring over low heat until hot but not boiling keeps the sauce smooth and prevents the bread crumbs and herbs from tightening, separating, or turning dull and bitter.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

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