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Sauce

Parsley and Butter

A sauce made by mixing butter, flour, hot water, and boiled parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the butter base

  1. Mix the flour with the butter until well combined.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the butter mixture with hot water and boil for 1 minute, shaking the pan continuously.

Add the parsley

  1. Add the finely minced boiled parsley and stir well.

  2. If using parsley seeds, boil them in a muslin bag in the water for 10 minutes before adding the butter.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 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

Butter
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, glossy texture as it melts into the sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the melted butter and hot water into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.
Parsley
Contributes the herbal aroma and fresh flavour that define the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 minute while shaking the pan continuously. Shaking keeps the flour evenly dispersed so it does not clump, and the brief boil lets the starch swell and thicken. Stopping the shaking can cause lumps or a greasy, separated sauce.

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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