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Sauce

Maitre D' Hotel Butter or Cold Sauce

A cold butter sauce flavored with lemon juice, parsley, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Maitre D' Hotel Butter or Cold Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the butter.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice a little at a time, stirring until the butter absorbs it.

Finish and store

  1. Add the cayenne and the chopped parsley.

  2. Keep in a cold place.

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.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. 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
Provides the rich fat and body that carries the sauce's flavour and smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice gradually. Acid added too quickly can make the butter separate or turn grainy. Adding the juice a little at a time while stirring lets the butter absorb it and keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

“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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