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Parsley and Butter

A simple 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) · 2 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 it up and boil in water for a few minutes.

  3. Drain and chop the parsley very finely.

Make the parsley butter

  1. Add the chopped parsley to the melted butter and heat until hot.

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 fresh herbal flavour and the bright green colour of the butter.
Butter
Carries the parsley flavour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Boil the parsley for only a few minutes. Brief boiling helps the parsley keep its bright green colour. Boiling too long breaks down chlorophyll, so the herb turns dull and olive-coloured and its flavour weakens.

“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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