Name: Parsley on Toast
Ingredients: 3 ounces of butter; juice of 1 lemon; 3 tablespoons of parsley, chopped fine; cold buttered toast

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Parsley on Toast

Ingredients

3 ounces of butter
juice of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons of parsley, chopped fine
cold buttered toast

Directions

Cream the butter in a bowl until smooth.
Add the lemon juice and chopped parsley, then mix well.
Spread the mixture on slices of cold buttered toast.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creamed to a smooth base that carries the lemon and parsley and spreads easily over toast.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and lifts the herb flavour.
Parsley: Provides a fresh, green herbal aroma and flavour to the butter.

“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.