No. 581
Maitre d'Hotel Butter
Beurre Maitre d'Hotel
Mix in with some fresh butter, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
Ranhofer gives no quantities at all, which is normal for the compound butters in this section — they were assembled to taste by cooks who made them daily. A working ratio and a note on texture is all this needs.
- Proportions are not givenThe original lists ingredients only. A standard modern ratio is 4 oz (1 stick) softened unsalted butter to 2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, 1 to 2 teaspoons lemon juice, 1/4 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of white or black pepper.
- "Fresh butter" means unsaltedIn nineteenth-century usage fresh butter is butter that has not been salted for keeping. Use unsalted so you control the seasoning, and let it soften at room temperature rather than melting it — melted butter will not re-emulsify smoothly with the lemon juice.
- Add the lemon juice last and slowlyBeat the butter until creamy, work in the parsley and seasoning, then trickle in the juice while mixing. Dumped in at once, the acid and water will bead out and leave the butter grainy.
- Dry the parsleyChop it fine and press it in a towel first. Wet parsley streaks the butter green and shortens its keeping.
- Shaping and storageRoll into a cylinder in parchment and chill until firm, then cut coins as needed. It keeps about a week refrigerated and freezes for a couple of months; the parsley flavour fades before the butter spoils.
- Yield and useFour ounces gives roughly eight half-inch coins, enough for six to eight portions. A coin set on a grilled steak, chop, or fish fillet at the moment of serving is the intended use — it should melt on the plate, not in the pan.
This is the plainest of the compound butters in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in a chapter that also contains Montpellier and shellfish coral butters. The name is generally read as "in the steward's manner" — maître d'hôtel originally meant the head of a household's service staff rather than a restaurant greeter — and the phrase came to signify something served simply and directly. Butters like this one worked as instant sauces: no roux, no reduction, just a disc of seasoned fat that dissolved into a natural jus on the hot plate. Escoffier's later Beurre Maître d'Hôtel gives much the same formula, and it has survived essentially unchanged, which is why a modern steakhouse compound butter would be recognisable to Ranhofer's kitchen.