Name: Nice Sauce for Lamb
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ cup chopped parsley; ½ cup fine bread crumbs; 1 cup broth; ⅓ cup wine; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Nice Sauce for Lamb

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the chopped parsley and fine bread crumbs, stirring to combine.
Pour in the broth and bring to a boil. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.
Stir in the wine, salt, and pepper.

Finish and serve

Before serving, squeeze in the lemon juice.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour through the sauce.
Fine bread crumbs: Thickens the sauce and gives it body as they absorb liquid.
Broth: Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries its savoury flavour.
Wine: Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice: Adds bright acidity that lifts and balances the rich 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.