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Parsley Sauce

A sauce made with parsley, butter, stock, onions, flour, mustard, sugar, cayenne, vinegar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the parsley

  1. Boil the parsley in water until tender, then remove the larger stalks.

  2. Mince the parsley leaves finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Dice the onions and add them to the butter, stirring until they begin to color.

  3. Add the flour and stir until it turns brown.

  4. Once it boils, add the stock, minced parsley, mustard, sugar, cayenne, vinegar, and salt.

  5. Simmer for five minutes, then skim and serve.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Parsley
Provides the main green flavour and colour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth as they colour in the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be cooked in the butter until it turns brown, as the record states, so its raw starchy taste cooks off and the roux thickens evenly before the stock goes in. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, flour, mustard, sugar, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, flour, mustard, sugar, pepper, vinegar. 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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