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Sauce

Butter a LA Maitre D'hotel

A butter sauce flavored with parsley, salt, pepper, lemon, and optional vinegar and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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)

Directions

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Beat in the salt, white pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and mix well.

  4. Serve immediately.

  5. If desired, stir in vinegar and mustard.

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.

  1. Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together28,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + white peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White pepper + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,657 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Vinegar and mustard share little aroma chemistry, yet 14,067 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich, creamy base that carries the other flavors and gives the butter its smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the butter and balances its richness.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and a green flavor to the butter.

The step that matters

Cream the butter until smooth. Creaming the butter until smooth gives an even, lump-free base, so the salt, lemon juice and parsley blend in evenly instead of staying in pockets.

Flavor stand-ins for the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, white pepper, lemon, vinegar):

  1. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, white pepper, lemon, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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