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Maitre d'Hotel Butter

A butter flavored with lemon juice, white pepper, sea salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Place the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add lemon juice, white pepper, salt, and minced parsley.

  3. Mix everything together thoroughly and quickly.

  4. Store in a cool place until needed.

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. Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together28,543 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Lemon + white peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,657 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. 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
Provides fat and creamy richness, carrying the lemon and herb flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and sharpens the herb flavour.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green aroma and flavour to the butter.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  3. Dillbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley. 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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