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Sauce

Tarsley and Butter

A sauce made by boiling parsley, pressing it, and mixing with melted butter or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tarsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley for 4 to 5 minutes less than you would for fennel.

  2. Thoroughly press the water from the parsley.

Make the sauce

  1. For an improved sauce, substitute béchamel or white melted butter for the common melted butter.

  2. Combine the melted butter or gravy with the minced parsley.

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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Adds richness and a smooth fat base that carries the flavor of the parsley.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma and green flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thoroughly press the water from the parsley. Leftover water dilutes the melted butter, so the sauce turns thin and watery and the parsley flavor is weakened.

“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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