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
Prepare the white sauce and set it aside.
Wash the parsley in hot water with salt, then shake off excess water and remove the stalks.
Finish the sauce
Chop the parsley finely, squeeze it dry in a cloth, and mix it into the sauce.
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
- Parsley
- Adds fresh, green herbal flavour and colour to the sauce.
- Butter
- Adds richness and carries flavour in the white sauce base.
The step that matters
Squeezing the parsley dry. Excess water from washed parsley would thin the sauce and dilute its flavour, so the herb should be squeezed dry before it is mixed in.
“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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