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Dessert

Green Butter

A green butter made from watercress, mustard, parsley, butter, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 293 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Green Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the watercress, mustard, and parsley.

  2. Boil in a saucepan of water with a pinch of baking soda and a little salt for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain and press out all the water.

Make the green butter

  1. Pound in a mortar with the butter, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Rub through a fine sieve.

Decorate

  1. Transfer to a piping bag with a small rose tip for decorating.

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. Watercress + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the smooth, rich base that the cooked greens are blended into.
Watercress
Provides the main green colour and a peppery, fresh flavour.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma and extra green colour.
Mustard
Adds sharp, peppery bite that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Boiling the greens. Brief boiling in salted water with a little baking soda helps the greens keep a bright green colour. Overcooking turns them drab and dulls their flavour. Pressing out all the water matters because leftover moisture would make the butter watery and prevent a smooth, stable mixture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against watercress, butter, parsley. 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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