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Sauce

Sauce a LA Venitienne, Oh Venetian Sauce

A sauce made with blanched parsley, butter, lemon juice, and egg yolk.

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

Sauce a LA Venitienne, Oh Venetian Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Chop the parsley very fine and blanch it.

  2. Drain the parsley on a sieve.

Finish the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the drained parsley with the butter sauce and lemon juice.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk and heat gently without boiling until hot.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce 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

Parsley
Adds fresh herbal flavor and bright green color to the sauce.
Butter sauce
Provides fat and richness as the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness.
Egg yolk
Thickens and emulsifies the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Egg yolk thickens as it warms but scrambles and curdles if it gets too hot. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

“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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