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Parsley Butter
3 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon lemon-juice
⅛ teaspoon pepper
Cream butter and then add lemon-juice, chopped parsley, salt and pepper. This may be used to spread on fried or boiled fish or over potato balls. When intended for the latter, one-half tablespoon of lemon-juice will be enough.
A compound butter, and one of the few nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sauces that needs no adjustment at all beyond understanding what "cream" means here.
- Creaming the butterThe butter must be soft enough to beat smooth with a spoon or fork but not melted, or the lemon juice will separate out. Leave it at room temperature 30-45 minutes rather than microwaving it.
- Add the acid graduallyA tablespoon of lemon juice into three tablespoons of butter is a lot of liquid for the butter to take up. Beating it in a little at a time helps the mixture stay smooth; added all at once it is more likely to separate.
- YieldAbout a quarter cup, enough for two to four servings of fish. It scales up directly if you are cooking for a table.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; the recipe specifies neither. Chop it fine and dry it well on a towel first, since wet parsley thins the butter.
- Potato ballsUsually potatoes cut with a scoop or pared into small spheres and boiled, though the term was also used for shaped mashed potato. The recipe simply says half a tablespoon of lemon juice is enough for them; no reason is given.
- Serving temperatureSpread it on the fish the moment it comes off the heat so it melts into a sauce. It can also be rolled in parchment, chilled firm, and cut into coins to set on hot fillets or steak.
- KeepingRefrigerate covered up to five days, or freeze the roll for a couple of months.
Compound butters are the simplest branch of the French sauce repertoire, and beurre maître d'hôtel — butter, parsley, lemon, salt and pepper, in essentially these proportions — is among the most widely copied of them. Its appearance in a household book alongside heavier flour-thickened sauces is in keeping with the way American domestic-science writers of the 1900s and 1910s absorbed simplified French technique through the cooking-school movement, often dropping the French name and presenting the mixture as a plain table sauce.