Name: Parsley and Butter, to Serve with
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons minced parsley; ½ pint melted butter; small quantity of water; coarse sea salt to taste

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, to Serve with

Ingredients

2 tablespoons minced parsley
½ pint melted butter
small quantity of water
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions

In a saucepan, bring a small quantity of salted water to a boil.
Add a bunch of washed parsley tied together and boil for 5 minutes.
Drain the parsley, mince the leaves finely, and place in a serving dish.
Pour the melted butter over the parsley, stir to mix, and serve.

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.

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 fresh, herbal flavor and green color that define the dish.
Butter: Carries the parsley flavor and adds richness and a smooth, coating texture.

“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.