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Sauce

Black Butter

A browned butter sauce flavored with parsley, vinegar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Black Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brown butter

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat until it turns a nice pale brown.

  2. Add the finely chopped, washed, and dried parsley when the butter starts to smoke.

  3. Shake the pan until the parsley becomes crisp.

  4. Remove the pan from heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the vinegar to the pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar over the butter.

  4. Pour the mixture into a hot sauce boat or over the dish you are serving.

  5. Sprinkle with coralline pepper for garnish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns to give a nutty flavour and forms the base of the sauce.
Parsley
Crisps in the hot fat, adding a toasted, crunchy garnish-like texture.
French vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich, nutty butter.

The step that matters

Browning the butter. Butter contains milk solids that can go from pale brown to burnt quickly. Removing the pan from heat at the right colour keeps the nutty flavour without bitterness.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Dillfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, vinegar. 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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