Why it works: Butter and parsley 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 Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
To wash the parsley, place it in a small piece of muslin or cloth and squeeze well in water.
Make the sauce
Heat the melted butter in a saucepan.
Just before serving, add the chopped parsley.
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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Butter + parsleytop 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
- Butter
- Melted butter forms the rich, fatty base that carries the flavour of the sauce.
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, green aroma and a mild herbal flavour to the sauce.
The step that matters
Adding the parsley just before serving. Parsley loses its bright colour and fresh aroma when heated for long, so it is added at the end to keep the sauce green and fragrant.
“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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