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Parsley and Butter

A sauce made by boiling parsley, mincing it, bruising into pulp, and mixing with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley in boiling water with salt for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the parsley on a sieve and mince it finely.

  3. Bruise the minced parsley to a pulp.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the parsley in a sauceboat and gradually mix in the melted butter.

  2. Serve the parsley and butter in the sauceboat, not poured over boiled dishes.

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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Provides the main herbal flavour and green colour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty texture that carries the parsley flavour.

The step that matters

Bruise the minced parsley to a pulp. Parsley that is only chopped stays coarse and grassy. Crushing it breaks down the cell walls so more flavour and colour are released into the butter, giving a smoother 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.

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