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Parsley and Butter

A simple sauce made by boiling parsley, chopping finely, and mixing with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Parsley and Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Pick and wash the parsley clean.

  2. Tie the parsley and boil in water for a few minutes.

  3. Drain the parsley.

  4. Chop the parsley very finely.

Make the parsley butter

  1. Add the chopped parsley to the melted butter.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Parsley
Supplies the fresh, herbal aroma and the green colour of the butter.
Butter
Carries the parsley flavour and adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Heat until hot. Butter is mostly fat with milk solids and water. If it is heated too hard, the milk solids can scorch and the butter can separate, so heat it gently only until warm enough to carry the parsley's flavour.

“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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