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Parsley Sauce

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon juice, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Wash the parsley, dry it thoroughly, and remove all stalks.

  2. Chop the parsley finely and wash it again, placing it in the corner of an old cloth to dry.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, blend the flour and butter until it resembles the color and consistency of honey.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Add seasoning and lemon juice.

  4. Just before serving, stir in the 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh herbal flavor and green color to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk gradually. Adding milk slowly while stirring constantly keeps the flour and butter mixture smooth. Dumping in liquid at once can trap lumps of starch that are hard to remove, so the sauce stays silky only if the milk goes in gradually and is stirred until it thickens and the raw flour taste cooks off.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, lemon. 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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