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Maitre D'Hote Sauce
It is nothing more than butter-sauce made thus: Add to one teacup drawn butter, the juice of one-half lemon. 2 teaspoonfuls chopped parsley. A little minced onion and thyme. Cayenne pepper and salt to taste. Beat with an egg-whip while simmering. Good for almost any dish of fish or meat.--Mrs. S. T.
A short sauce recipe that assumes you already know how to make drawn butter, which is the whole difficulty. Everything else is seasoning to taste.
- Drawn butter is not melted butterIn American cookery of this period, drawn butter means a simple flour-thickened butter sauce: roughly 2 tablespoons butter cooked with 1 tablespoon flour, whisked with about a cup of hot water or fish stock, then finished with more butter off the heat. It is a white sauce made on water rather than milk, and it is what gives this sauce body.
- A teacupUsually reckoned at about 6 fluid ounces, three-quarters of a cup, though period usage varied from a gill upward. The recipe scales freely, since most of the seasoning is to taste.
- Add the lemon last, off the boilAcid added to a flour-and-butter sauce over heat can thin it and encourage it to break. Whisk the juice in at the end with the pan off the burner.
- "Simmering" wants to be barely thatA butter sauce held at a real simmer separates into greasy flour paste. Keep it just below a shiver and whisk, which is presumably why an egg-whip is called for.
- Onion and thymeNo quantity is given; a teaspoon of very finely minced onion or shallot and a few thyme leaves are enough for a cup of sauce. Both are raw here, so mince them fine or steep them in the hot sauce for a few minutes and strain.
- CayenneA pinch, under 1/8 teaspoon for this volume; the recipe wants a background heat, not a flavour of its own.
- Yield and holdingAbout three-quarters of a cup, enough for four servings of fish. Best made while the fish rests and served at once.
The name is an anglicised spelling of sauce à la maître d'hôtel — the steward's or head-waiter's sauce. In French practice, maître d'hôtel butter is a compound butter: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, chilled, and sliced onto a grilled steak or fish so it melts at the table. Hot maître d'hôtel sauces on a drawn-butter base were also current, and it is one of these that Mrs. S. T. describes here. The result is a genuinely useful sauce for boiled or fried fish, and the flat opening line — "it is nothing more than butter-sauce" — is characteristic of Housekeeping in Old Virginia, a book assembled from contributors who were writing for each other rather than for beginners.