Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓
Brown Butter Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat and cook until the butter is very brown.
Add the parsley and fry for a moment longer.
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.
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Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Browns and develops nutty, toasted flavour as its milk solids toast, giving the sauce its character.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a little colour to the finished sauce.
The step that matters
Cooking the butter to deep brown. Butter moves from golden to burnt quickly once its milk solids darken. Removing it from the heat at the right colour gives nutty flavour without bitterness.
“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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