Name: To Make Lemon Sauce
Ingredients: 2 lemons; liver (amount not specified); scalded parsley (amount not specified); boiling béchamel sauce (amount not specified); melted butter (amount not specified)

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

To Make Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

2 lemons
liver (amount not specified)
scalded parsley (amount not specified)
boiling béchamel sauce (amount not specified)
melted butter (amount not specified)

Directions

Prepare

Pare the lemons and cut them into very small dice.

Make the sauce

In a stewpan, combine the liver and chopped scalded parsley.
Add some boiling béchamel sauce and a little melted butter.
Simmer over low heat for two minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Liver + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Lemons: Provide the diced citrus flavour and acidity that brightens the sauce.
Béchamel sauce: Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce body and smoothness.
Melted butter: Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

“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.