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Sauce

Parsley Sauce

A sauce made from boiled parsley, sweet milk, butter, and optional lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley in water for about 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the leaves and chop them finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Wipe out the saucepan, then return the water.

  2. Add an equal quantity of sweet milk to the water.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley.

  5. Gradually add the butter.

  6. Add lemon juice if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with broiled or boiled fish.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body as it melts into the liquid.
Sweet milk
Provides creaminess and body, forming the base of the sauce.
Parsley
Supplies the main herbal flavour and aroma of the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the butter.. Adding butter in small amounts to hot liquid lets it melt and emulsify evenly, giving a smooth sauce. Adding it all at once can cause it to separate and look greasy.

“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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