Name: Sauce for New Carrots
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; ½ ounce flour; ½ cup stock; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 2 tablespoons cream

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 for New Carrots

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.
Gradually add the stock, stirring constantly until it boils.
Remove from heat and mix in the parsley, lemon juice, and cream.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter: Adds fat and rich flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour: Its starch thickens the sauce once cooked with the butter and liquid.
Stock: Liquid that hydrates the flour starch, which swells and thickens as it heats.
Cream: Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually while stirring constantly. Adding stock slowly and stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so its starch hydrates without lumps. Stirring until it boils lets the starch swell fully and thicken the 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.

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Sauce for New Carrots