Name: Maitre D'hotel Sauce
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons butter, softened; 1 teaspoon chopped parsley; Juice of ½ lemon; Salt to taste

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

2 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
Juice of ½ lemon
Salt to taste

Directions

In a bowl, mix together the softened butter, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.
Add salt to taste and combine well.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,543 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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: Softened butter forms the creamy base and carries the flavour of the herbs and lemon.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green herbal aroma and a mild, clean flavour to the butter.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances its richness.

“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.