Home › The Principles of Cookery › Maitre D'Hotel Butter
Maitre D'Hotel Butter
Knead together (on a plate and with the point of a knife) equal quantities of chopped parsley and fresh butter. Add pepper, salt, and a little lemon-juice. Keep in a cool place. When a dish is said to be a la Maitre d'Hotel it is generally served with this butter.
A compound butter, and still the standard finish for grilled steak, chops and fish. The one thing to reconsider is the ratio.
- Equal quantities is a lot of parsleyVolume for volume, equal parts chopped parsley and butter gives a stiff green paste rather than a butter. Modern practice is roughly 2 tablespoons of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley to 4 oz (115 g) butter; read the original as "generous" rather than literal unless you want an intensely herbal spread.
- Butter temperature"Fresh butter" here means unsalted and unripened, not straight from the fridge. Let it soften to about 65F before working it, or the knife-point kneading on a plate becomes a fight. If your butter is salted, drop the added salt.
- Lemon juice, measured"A little" is about 1 to 2 teaspoons per 4 oz of butter. Add it a few drops at a time and work it in, or the emulsion breaks and weeps water when the butter melts.
- Dry the parsleyWash and chop the parsley, then squeeze it in a towel until genuinely dry. Wet parsley bleeds and gives a streaky, watery butter that separates on a hot plate.
- Shaping and keepingInstead of a lump in a cool larder, roll the finished butter in parchment into a cylinder about 1 inch across, chill until firm, and cut coins straight from the log. It keeps a week refrigerated and three months frozen.
- YieldFour ounces of butter makes eight to ten coins, one per serving. A single coin melting on a hot steak, cutlet or grilled sole is the whole point of the preparation.
- Serve on food, not in a panThe butter is a finish, not a cooking fat. Put it on the meat or fish at the moment of serving; heated in a pan the parsley scorches and the lemon turns bitter.
A la maitre d'hotel means, literally, in the manner of the house steward - the man in charge of the dining room rather than the kitchen - and the name is often said to reflect a preparation simple enough to be finished at the sideboard or the service table rather than at the range. Victorian and Edwardian cookery books treated a handful of compound butters, along with the basic sauces and glazes, as building blocks a cook was expected to have ready rather than dishes in their own right; the same butter dresses grilled steak, boiled potatoes, fried whiting and a plate of asparagus. Parsley, lemon and butter were cheap and familiar, which is a fair part of why this particular combination outlasted most of the elaborate garnishes that surrounded it in the same books.