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Sauce

Parsley and Butter Sauce

A sauce made with butter, flour, water, milk, parsley, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 and Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.

  2. Once melted, add the flour and mix well.

  3. Pour in the water and milk, stirring to create a smooth sauce.

  4. Add the chopped parsley and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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
Provides fat and richness, and carries the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce once it is cooked with the butter.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess to the sauce.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the water and milk, stirring to create a smooth sauce. Adding liquid to the butter and flour mixture all at once while stirring keeps starch dispersed, so lumps are less likely to form and the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, flour, butter. 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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