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 ↓
Celery Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the parsley
Wash the parsley in cold water.
Boil the parsley in salt water for 6–7 minutes.
Drain and remove the leaves from the stalks, then chop them finely.
Make and serve the sauce
Stir the chopped parsley into the melted butter.
Use 2 tablespoons of parsley leaves for every ½ cup of butter.
Serve with boiled fowls, rock fish, sea bass, or knuckle of veal.
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.
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Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Gives the sauce its fresh, herbal flavour and green colour.
- Butter
- Carries the chopped parsley and gives the sauce a rich, smooth texture.
The step that matters
Boiling the parsley for 6–7 minutes. Prolonged boiling breaks down the chlorophyll that makes parsley green, so the herb turns dull and loses its fresh flavour. Timing the boil closely keeps the colour and taste bright.
“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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