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Sauce

Parsley and Butter Sauce

A sauce made from parsley, butter, eggs, milk, and aromatics simmered together.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Parsley and Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs and eggs

  1. Pick and wash parsley, then dry and chop finely.

  2. Boil 2 eggs for 10 minutes, then cool, shell, and chop finely; add to sauce No. 1.

Make the sauce

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley to sauce No. 1 and let it simmer gently for a few minutes.

  2. Chop a small onion and 2 cloves of garlic, then fry in 2 ounces of butter with 12 cloves, 12 peppercorns, and 3 bay leaves.

  3. Add ½ pint of milk and bring to a slow boil.

  4. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little cold milk, stir into the boiling milk, and strain.

  5. Let it cool slightly, then add 1 beaten egg yolk, a little Nepal pepper, and salt to taste.

  6. Carefully add chopped tarragon and chervil, stirring gently to prevent curdling.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 silky mouthfeel to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.
Eggs
Chopped hard-boiled eggs add body and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, and if the sauce is too hot when it goes in, the proteins can scramble and curdle. Letting it cool slightly first helps keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, sauce, egg, pepper, onion, garlic, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sauce, egg, pepper, onion, garlic, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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