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Maitre D'Hotel Sauce
2 cups drawn-butter sauce 1 tablespoon lemon-juice 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 2 egg-yolks Salt and pepper Add the lemon-juice and chopped parsley to the drawn-butter sauce. Let it cool slightly, add the beaten yolks and season with salt and pepper. Do not permit the sauce to boil after the addition of the egg-yolk.
A thickened butter sauce enriched with egg yolk at the end. Everything depends on the temperature when the yolks go in.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolksOnce the yolks are stirred in, the sauce must be held below a simmer or it will scramble into grainy threads. Take the pan off the heat entirely and finish over the residual warmth, or set it in a bowl of hot water.
- Temper the yolksThe original only says to let the sauce cool slightly before the beaten yolks go in. Tempering is a safer route to the same end: beat the yolks in a small bowl, whisk in a few spoonfuls of the warm sauce, then return the mixture to the pan while stirring.
- Drawn-butter sauceIn this period the term generally means a butter sauce thickened with flour and slackened with water or fish stock rather than milk; period proportions vary, but roughly equal spoonfuls of butter and flour cooked together and thinned with hot liquid. Modern menus use "drawn butter" to mean plain melted butter, which is not what is wanted here.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; chop it fine and add it late so it stays green. Dried parsley contributes nothing to this sauce.
- LemonOne tablespoon into two cups is restrained. Taste after the yolks are in and add more if the sauce is destined for a fatty fish such as salmon or mackerel.
- Yield and serviceAbout two cups, enough for six to eight portions of fish or grilled meat. Serve it promptly; it will not hold on a burner and does not reheat well.
- If it separatesA sauce that begins to look curdled can sometimes be pulled back by removing it from the heat at once and whisking in a tablespoon of cold water or cold butter. Past a certain point it cannot be saved.
The name means "in the manner of the maître d'hôtel" \, the steward of a large household or restaurant, and in French practice it is best known as a compound butter worked with lemon juice and parsley and sliced cold over grilled meat or fish. A thickened sauce under the same name was also current, and American cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried versions of it, building the same flavourings into a flour-thickened base that a cook could raise from butter, flour and stock. The egg yolks here add richness and a pale gloss, on a floury base that is more forgiving than a hollandaise.