Skip to main content
Sauce

Green Butter

A green butter made with anchovies, parsley, cayenne pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Green Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the anchovies

  1. Soak the anchovies in lukewarm water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pound the soaked anchovies in a mortar until fine.

  3. Add the anchovy paste and some boiled parsley.

  4. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve to remove the bones.

Finish the butter

  1. Mix the paste into the butter and add a pinch of Cayenne pepper.

  2. Serve with cheese.

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. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  5. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Provide the salty, savoury base flavour of the butter.
Anchovy paste
Adds concentrated savoury flavour that blends evenly into the butter.
Boiled parsley
Contributes a fresh, herbal aroma and green colour.
Butter
Acts as the fat that carries the flavours and gives the spread a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Pass the mixture through a wire sieve. Pounding does not remove every bone, and small fragments left in the paste would make the butter gritty and unpleasant to eat. Sieving catches them and leaves a smooth, even paste that blends well into the butter.

“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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes