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Sauce

Parsley Sauce

A simple parsley-infused white sauce made with water or milk and wholemeal flour, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a white sauce using water and wholemeal flour if milk is not desired.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of finely-chopped parsley to the sauce.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Stir in a small piece of butter or nut butter just before serving.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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

Wholemeal flour
Thickens the liquid into a white sauce as its starch gelatinises when heated.
Parsley
Adds fresh green flavour and aroma to the sauce.
Butter or nut butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, glossier finish when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Flour starch only thickens fully once heated past boiling, so a sauce that is not brought to a boil can stay thin and taste raw. Stirring while heating prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter. 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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