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Maître D'Hôtel Sauce
1 To two tablespoonfuls of creamed butter add a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, half a teaspoonful of salt, and the same of pepper, then add slowly a tablespoonful of lemon juice. This will keep some time in a cool place, but must be softened before using, if served with broiled chops or cold meat.
A compound butter rather than a sauce in the poured sense; it melts over hot meat and spreads on cold. The quantities here are small and the balance of salt to pepper is unusually aggressive by modern taste.
- Creamed butterMeans butter beaten soft and smooth, not melted. Leave 2 tablespoons at room temperature until it takes an impression easily, then work it with a fork or small spatula until pale and light.
- The pepperHalf a teaspoon of pepper to 2 tablespoons of butter is very sharp by modern taste. You may prefer to start with about an eighth of a teaspoon and adjust upward. The salt at half a teaspoon is also on the high side if you are using salted butter.
- Add the lemon slowlyThis is the hinge. Lemon juice dumped in at once will separate out and leave the butter weeping. Add it a few drops at a time, beating between additions, as for a mayonnaise, so it emulsifies into the fat.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; chop it fine and dry it well on a towel first, or the water beads out of the butter later.
- Keeping itRoll the finished butter in parchment into a cylinder and refrigerate up to a week, or freeze for a month or two. Slice off coins as needed. "A cool place" would have meant a larder or cellar rather than a modern refrigerator, so the original's "some time" is conservative for us.
- Softened before usingThe original directs softening whether the butter goes on broiled chops or on cold meat. Cut rounds and let them sit ten minutes at room temperature before laying them on cold meat, so they spread.
- YieldRoughly 3 to 4 tablespoons, enough to dress two to four chops.
Maître d'hôtel butter takes its name from the head of a household's dining service, and the term appears in English cookery books from the nineteenth century, reflecting French kitchen practice, where a handful of standard compound butters were kept ready to finish grilled meat and fish at the moment of service. Butter, parsley, lemon and seasoning is the baseline version against which the others (anchovy, mustard, shallot, tarragon) are variations. Households with a joint left over from Sunday needed a repertoire of things to make yesterday's beef or mutton palatable, and a well-seasoned butter did the work that a bottled condiment does now.