Name: Maitre D'hotel Butter or Sauce
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; juice of 2 lemons; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 28,543 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

½ cup butter
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
juice of 2 lemons
¼ teaspoon salt

Directions

Mix the butter, parsley, lemon juice, and salt together until well combined.
Store the mixture for later use.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,543 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,197 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: Provides the fatty, rich base that carries the other flavours and gives the butter its smooth texture.
Parsley: Adds fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavour that brightens the rich butter.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter and lifts the flavour.

“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.