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Sauce

Maitre d'Hotel Sauce

A savory sauce made with butter, flour, milk, stock, shallot, thyme, parsley, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

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

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the shallot and thyme, finely chopped, and cook gently for 10 minutes.

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

  4. Add pepper and salt to taste, then stir in the chopped parsley.

  5. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries the flavour of the shallot and herbs.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquids into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the sauce.
Stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that the flour thickens.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a clean herbal flavour at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the stock and milk after the flour. Stirring the liquids in gradually while the flour is cooked into the butter keeps the sauce smooth. Adding liquid too fast lets lumps form before the starch can disperse evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon, pepper, thyme):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon, pepper, thyme. 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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