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Sauce

Parsley Sauce for Boiled Fowl

A sauce made from butter, milk, water, salt, and parsley, simmered into a thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce for Boiled Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cut the butter into small pieces and place in a double saucepan.

  2. Add enough flour to make a stiff paste.

  3. Stir in the milk and then the water, continuing to stir until hot and thick like cream.

Prepare the parsley

  1. Wash the parsley thoroughly and remove the leaves from the stems.

  2. Add the salt to the boiling water and cook the parsley for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the parsley, mince it finely, or mash it into a pulp.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir the prepared parsley into the melted butter mixture.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Milk + parsleytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,011 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Milk
Provides moisture and creaminess, helping form the body of the sauce.
Fresh parsley
Supplies the main herbal flavour and green aroma of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until hot and thick like cream. Flour thickens only when heated in the presence of fat and liquid, so the starch can swell. Continuous stirring keeps the mixture smooth and prevents lumps and scorching.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Macefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk. 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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