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Sauce

Parsley Sauce for Boiled Fowl

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, water, salt, and parsley, thickened and served with boiled fowl.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce for Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cut the butter into small bits.

  2. Place the butter in a double saucepan.

  3. Add enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  4. Stir in the milk and mix well.

  5. Add the water.

  6. Continue stirring until hot and thick like cream.

Prepare the parsley

  1. Wash the parsley thoroughly.

  2. Remove the leaves from the stems.

  3. Add the salt to the boiling water.

  4. Boil the parsley for 10 minutes.

  5. Drain the parsley.

  6. Mince it finely or bruise it to a pulp.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the prepared parsley into the melted butter mixture.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the rich fat base of the sauce and carries its flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce into a stiff paste that sets it smooth and creamy when heated.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild dairy richness to the sauce base.
Fresh parsley
Supplies the herbal aroma and green flavour that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Continue stirring until hot and thick like cream. Flour thickens only as its starch is heated in liquid, and stopping early or letting lumps form leaves the sauce thin or grainy. Steady stirring keeps the mixture smooth as it thickens.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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