PARSLEY SAUCE

Sauce au Persil (parsley sauce) teaches restraint at the finish. Its liaison, the egg-and-cream thickening, is already built, the butter is already emulsified, and the parsley is not something to simmer into submission. The one true thing is simple: chop the herb at the last possible moment and fold it into the sauce away from the heat.

The formula assumes a saucier with Butter Sauce (No. 66) finished and ready for service, then gives the parsley by the pint. At home, one heavy saucepan and a sharp knife do the work. This batch preserves the book's ratio of one heaped tablespoon of parsley per pint; it needs no second straining because the base arrives complete from its own entry. That extra pass was brigade scaffolding. The last-minute parsley and the refusal to boil are the dish itself, and they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished sauce should fall from a spoon in an ivory ribbon, glossy with butter and brightly freckled with green. If the liaison begins to separate while warming, don't pour it out. Ça se rattrape, and the method below will bring it back. The decisive step remains the last one: take the pan off the heat before the parsley enters.