Skip to main content
Sauce

Maitre D'hotel Sauce

A savory sauce made from fowl bones, ham, herbs, and butter, finished with lemon juice and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Mince the ham finely and place it in a saucepan with the bones, garlic, shallots, herbs, and ½ pint of water.

  2. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by one-third, then strain into another saucepan.

  3. Make a thickening by melting the butter and mixing it with the flour, then stir it smooth into the gravy.

  4. Add the seasoning, sugar, and lemon juice, and serve hot but not boiling.

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

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

  2. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together27,044 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the gravy and adds richness.
Flour
Mixed with melted butter to thicken the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the savoury gravy and balances the richness.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Serve hot but not boiling. Once flour-thickened sauces reach a boil, the starch can break down and the butter can separate, leaving the sauce thin or greasy. Holding it just below boiling keeps it smooth and cohesive, and it keeps the lemon's fresh flavour intact.

Flavor stand-ins for the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, pepper, sugar, shallot, ham):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, pepper, sugar, shallot, ham. 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.

You might also like

Illustration of Hot Lemon Cream SauceIllustrationHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesIllustration of Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)IllustrationWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesIllustration of Caper SauceIllustrationCaper Sauce180 recipesIllustration of Brown SauceIllustrationBrown Sauce141 recipes