Name: Lemon Sauce
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons butter; juice of 1 large or 2 small lemons; 1 heaping tablespoon finely minced parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
juice of 1 large or 2 small lemons
1 heaping tablespoon finely minced parsley

Directions

Make the sauce

Heat the butter until it can be beaten to a cream.
Whip in the strained lemon juice and minced parsley until smooth and light green.

Serve

Fill the lemon halves with the mixture.
Garnish the dish of smelts with the filled lemon halves.
Serve one with each portion of fish.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Beaten with heat to form a cream, giving the sauce richness and a smooth body.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity and bright flavor that cuts the richness of the butter.
Parsley: Adds fresh herbal aroma and a light green color to the sauce.

“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.