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Sauce

Maitre D'hotel

A buttery sauce flavored with parsley, chives, nutmeg, cider vinegar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop parsley and chives finely.

  2. Combine with nutmeg, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  3. Knead in the butter until well mixed.

  4. Add cider vinegar and lemon juice, and mix well.

Make the warm version

  1. For a warm version, add water and heat on low for 10 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle in flour while stirring, then remove from heat and add lemon juice before serving.

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

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich base that carries the herbs and gives the sauce its smooth, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the butter and balances its richness.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green flavour and visual colour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the warm version slightly so the sauce holds together when heated.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the warm version. Flour must be stirred in while the liquid is warm and kept moving, otherwise it clumps and the sauce turns lumpy instead of smoothly thickened.

Flavor stand-ins for the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, nutmeg, pepper, butter, cider, vinegar, lemon):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, nutmeg, pepper, butter, cider, vinegar, lemon. 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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