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Chive Butter
Cream one-fourth cup butter; add two tablespoons very finely chopped chives. Season with a few grains salt and cayenne.
A compound butter of the simplest kind: soften, mix, chill. The only technical demand is that the butter be soft enough to take the chives evenly without melting.
- QuantitiesOne-fourth cup butter is 4 tablespoons, or half a standard American stick (about 2 oz / 57 g). Two tablespoons of finely snipped chives is a generous ratio to that much butter.
- "Cream" the butterThis means beat softened butter until it is pale and pliable, not melted. Leave it at room temperature 30–45 minutes; butter worked while still cold will stay lumpy, and butter that has gone oily will separate when chilled.
- A few grainsAn old shorthand for the smallest pinch a cook can take between finger and thumb — under 1/16 teaspoon. With cayenne it is meant as background warmth, not heat you can name.
- Chives, chopped fineUse scissors rather than a knife; chives bruise and weep when crushed, which discolours the butter. Dried chives are not a substitute here — the whole point is the fresh onion note.
- Chilling and shapingThe recipe stops at the mixing. To serve in coins, roll the finished butter in parchment into a log and refrigerate at least an hour before cutting; butter moulds and paddles were also in use in this period for shaping butter for the table.
- Yield and useMakes roughly 1/3 cup. Compound butters of this kind were generally melted over grilled or broiled meat and fish, boiled potatoes or green vegetables, and served on hot rolls.
- KeepingFresh herbs shorten butter's life. Use within about five days refrigerated, or freeze the log and slice off what you need.
Compound butters — butter creamed with herbs, anchovy, lemon, mustard or shallot — were standard equipment in the professional and aspiring domestic kitchens of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a quick way to finish a plain broiled chop or fillet without making a sauce. Chives, the mildest of the cultivated alliums, were a common kitchen-garden and even window-box plant, so a cook was likely to have some to hand. A chilled log of seasoned butter did the work of a sauce for the Sunday roast while leaving the cook free on the day.