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Parsley Sauce

A buttery parsley sauce made with flour, liquid, and seasonings, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Melt 2 oz. of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 oz. of flour and fry without browning.

  3. Gradually pour in ½ pint of boiling water, milk, or stock.

  4. Stir over heat until it re-boils.

  5. Move the saucepan to the side and add the chopped parsley.

  6. Add the second ounce of butter and season with salt and white pepper.

  7. Boil for 2-3 minutes longer.

  8. Squeeze in a few drops of lemon juice just before serving.

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. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Milk or stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour-butter roux thickens into sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and colour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the flour without browning. Cooking the flour and butter gently into a roux cooks out raw starch taste and lets it thicken evenly. Browning changes the flavour and colour, and the sauce will taste toasty rather than fresh.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, parsley, 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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