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Sauce

Parsley and Butter Sauce

A sauce made from boiled parsley, butter, and optional green gooseberry pulp and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and gooseberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Parsley and Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Wash and boil the parsley until tender.

  2. Drain and press the parsley to remove excess water.

  3. Chop the parsley finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Add melted butter and mix well.

  2. If desired, add green gooseberry pulp and sifted sugar before serving.

  3. Serve immediately to prevent discoloration.

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 + gooseberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + gooseberrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Gooseberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together131 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Provides the main green flavour and colour, and its pressed, chopped texture gives the sauce body.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the parsley and giving the sauce a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Cooked parsley loses its bright green colour when exposed to air and held over time, so serving promptly keeps the sauce looking fresh.

Swap the gooseberry

The recipe marks gooseberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Gooseberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, sugar. 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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