Name: Parsley and Butter
Ingredients: ½ cup drawn butter; 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

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 ↓

Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

½ cup drawn butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley

Directions

In a saucepan, combine the drawn butter and chopped parsley. Bring the mixture to a boil.
Serve with boiled chicken, lamb, mackerel, or bluefish.

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.

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

Drawn butter: Carries the parsley and gives the sauce its rich, fatty mouthfeel.
Fresh parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavour to 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.