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Parsley and Butter

A sauce made by boiling parsley, finely chopping it, and mixing with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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. Pick and wash the parsley clean.

  2. Tie the parsley and boil in water for a few minutes.

  3. Drain and chop the parsley very finely.

Make the butter

  1. Add melted butter and heat until hot.

  2. Make it thick with parsley.

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 bulk, green colour and fresh herbal flavour that thicken the butter.
Butter
Adds fat that carries the parsley flavour and gives the sauce richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Drain and chop the parsley very finely. Parsley holds a lot of water after boiling. If it is not drained well, the extra moisture thins the butter and dilutes the flavour. Fine chopping releases more of the herb's surface so it blends evenly into the fat and gives a thick, uniform 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.

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