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Halibut Steaks with Maitre-d’ Hotel Sauce

Halibut steaks baked with a buttered paper, served with a sauce of flour, butter, milk, stock, eschalot, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Halibut Steaks with Maitre-d’ Hotel Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the halibut and cut it into slices ½ inch thick.

  2. Butter a baking dish and lay the fish slices in it.

  3. Squeeze the juice of ½ lemon over the fish and sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  4. Cover the fish with a well‑buttered paper.

Make the sauce

  1. To make the Maitre-d' Hotel Sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the finely chopped eschalot and cook gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix in the flour, then gradually stir in the stock and milk.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then add the chopped parsley.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

  2. Lift the fish slices onto a hot dish.

  3. Pour in the gravy from the fish and serve over the fish.

  4. Pour the Maitre-d' Hotel Sauce over the fish to coat it well.

  5. Garnish with fresh parsley and sprinkle with coralline pepper.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Halibut
Forms the main protein that cooks through gently in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and keeps the fish from drying out.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a starch-based structure with the melted butter.
Milk
Gives the sauce a creamy body and mild sweetness.
Stock
Supplies savoury depth to the sauce base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and the sauce.

The step that matters

Making the flour-butter base and adding liquid. Cook the flour in the melted butter first, then add the stock and milk gradually while stirring. This prevents lumps and lets the starch thicken the sauce evenly.

“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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