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 ↓
Anchovy Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Make the butter
Mix the parsley, anchovies, and butter thoroughly.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or tamis.
Shape and serve
Form the mixture into small balls.
Chill the balls and serve with toast.
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.
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Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Adds fresh, green herbal flavour and colour to the butter.
- Anchovies
- Adds salty, savoury depth that seasons the butter.
- Butter
- Provides fat that carries the flavours and firms up when chilled.
The step that matters
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve or tamis. Pressing the mixture through a fine mesh breaks down the parsley and anchovy fibres, giving a smooth, even texture rather than a coarse, stringy one.
“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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