Name: Maitre D’hotel Butter
Ingredients: 1 oz. butter; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; salt to taste; pepper to taste

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, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: fish

Directions

Make the butter

In a bowl, combine the butter, chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, and mix all ingredients together until well blended.

Serve

Spread over steak, fish, or other dishes as desired.

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.

Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together28,543 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,197 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: Carries the parsley and lemon flavour and melts over hot food to coat it richly.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green aroma and a clean herbal flavour to the butter.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and cuts through its fattiness.

“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.