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Sauce

Parsley and Butter Sauce

A sauce made from boiled parsley, butter, flour, and gravy thickened with broth or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Parsley and Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley for about 10 minutes, then drain it on a sieve.

  2. Mince the parsley finely and bruise it to a pulp.

  3. Mix the parsley with the melted butter gradually.

Make the roux

  1. In a saucepan over low heat, melt fresh butter and add flour to thicken it to a paste.

  2. Stir the mixture for about 15 minutes until smooth and golden.

Finish the sauce

  1. Pour the thickened sauce into an earthen pan for use.

  2. To thicken gravy, add broth or warm water in the proportion of 2 tablespoons to a pint.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Parsley
Supplies the fresh, herbal flavour and green colour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a paste that gives the sauce body as its starch cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter paste. Flour must be stirred continuously over low heat so it cooks evenly without lumps or scorching. Cooking the starch thoroughly thickens the sauce smoothly and removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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