Maitre D' Hotel Smør

This recipe hails from an 1884 Danish-Norwegian cookbook published in Chicago for the immigrant community. At the time, such cookbooks aimed to preserve Old World culinary traditions in a New World setting, offering both familiarity and adaptability. This butter preparation, rooted in French cuisine but beloved throughout Scandinavia, reflects the period's fondness for flavored butters to enrich simply cooked fish—an economical and staple food among Danish and Norwegian immigrants. The book itself was part of a larger trend: immigrant households would rely on such texts to maintain community identity and pass on kitchen wisdom, even as ingredients and kitchen equipment evolved in America.

In the 1880s kitchen, this flavored butter would be prepared using just a sturdy butter paddle or a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients. A small kitchen knife would suffice for chopping parsley, and a simple press or by hand for squeezing lemon juice. The blending was done in a cool bowl or on a marble slab to keep the butter from melting prematurely, as refrigeration was less common and iceboxes were the norm in well-to-do households. There were no electric appliances; everything depended on hand labor, a sharp knife, and a little elbow grease.