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Sauce

Parsley Sauce

A sauce made from butter, flour, milk, liquor, parsley, salt, and pepper, used for boiled fowl, veal, and calf’s head.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

  3. Add the liquor and milk, stirring until it boils.

  4. Simmer for a few minutes, then season with salt and pepper.

  5. Add the chopped parsley and remove from heat.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Forms the roux base with the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Adds liquid and body, giving the sauce a creamy texture.
Liquor from the cooked meat
Supplies savoury meaty flavour and liquid for the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour briefly in the melted butter removes its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding liquid too quickly or without stirring can leave lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, butter, flour, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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