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Maitre d'Hotel Butter
Work into 1/2 cup butter all the lemon juice it will hold. Then add 1 teaspoon finely minced parsley. Serve with the fish.
A compound butter of the plainest kind: softened butter, lemon juice and parsley, worked cold and served in a slice on hot fish. The only technique that matters is getting the acid to stay in the fat.
- Butter temperatureThe butter must be soft but not melted -- around 65F, plastic enough to cream with a spoon or paddle. Melted butter will not hold the lemon juice and will separate into a slick.\t
- "All the lemon juice it will hold"For 1/2 cup (4 oz / 115 g) butter this is roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons, added a teaspoon at a time and beaten in fully before the next addition. Stop when the mixture looks glossy rather than curdled and beads of juice begin to weep out.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; mince it fine and dry it well in a towel first, since wet parsley loosens the emulsion.
- SeasoningThe recipe does not specify salted or unsalted butter; with unsalted, add about 1/4 teaspoon fine salt. A few grinds of white pepper is common in other versions of this butter, though it is not in the text.
- Shaping and chillingRoll the finished butter in parchment or foil into a cylinder about 1 inch across, chill at least an hour, then cut coins to lay on the fish as it goes to the table. It can also be piped into rosettes and refrigerated on a plate.
- Yield1/2 cup is enough for six to eight portions of fish. It keeps a week refrigerated and freezes for three months, well wrapped.
- ServingPut it on at the last moment, on food hot enough to melt it into a sauce. It is equally at home on grilled steak, boiled potatoes or green vegetables.
Beurre maitre d'hotel is one of the standard compound butters of French cookery, long established in professional kitchens and carried into English-language cookbooks largely unchanged; the name refers to the maitre d'hotel, the dining-room manager, and is often taken to mean a simple finish that could be made or assembled front of house rather than a saucier's work. It survives in modern menus mainly as the pat of herb butter melting on a steak.