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Butter for Cold Dishes
Pound the following ingredients in a mortar, and reduce them to a smooth paste:--One clove of garlic, six hard boiled yolks of eggs, a spoonful of capers, and a seasoning of mace and all-spice; moisten with a little tarragon vinegar and a glassful of salad-oil, and then add eight ounces of butter, with spinach-juice enough to make the butter green. Pound all till very smooth, and set it on ice to get firm, when it may be used for the decoration of cold meats, fish, salads, etc. Probable cost, 1s. 8d. to 2s., according to the price of butter.
A compound butter in the French manner, coloured green and stiffened on ice for piping and garnishing. It is close kin to beurre de Montpellier, and the same rules apply: everything cold, everything smooth.
- The hinge: keep it cold and add the oil slowlyThe mixture stays smooth only while the butter is cool and firm; let it warm and it slackens and separates. Have the butter cool but pliable, dribble the oil in rather than tipping in the glassful at once, and chill the moment it looks smooth.
- A glassful of oilA wine glass in Victorian kitchens was roughly 2 fl oz, a tumbler nearer 8. Two fluid ounces against half a pound of butter is already a soft, spreadable result; if you want a butter firm enough to pipe rosettes, start with half that and judge as you go.
- Mortar, or the modern equivalentA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but it also warms the butter. Blitz the yolks, garlic, capers and spices to a paste first, then add the cold butter in cubes and pulse only until combined.
- Spinach juiceThe traditional green is made by pounding raw spinach leaves and squeezing out the juice through muslin; a small handful gives plenty of colour. A brief blanching of the leaves first may help hold the green. Some cooks gently heat the juice to set the green curd and use that instead.
- Mace and allspiceLikely whole spice ground fresh, though the recipe does not say. A blade of mace and three or four allspice berries, ground fine, is a reasonable seasoning for half a pound of butter; ground mace from a jar is milder, so allow a little more.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and easy to make by steeping a sprig in white wine vinegar for a week. It carries much of the perfume in this butter, so do not substitute plain malt.
- SaltThe recipe gives none, assuming salted butter and salty capers. Taste before chilling: an under-salted green butter reads as greasy.
- Yield and keepingNearer a pound once the yolks and oil are counted in, enough to garnish a large cold salmon or a tray of canape bases. Roll in parchment as a log or pipe rosettes onto a chilled tray; use it within a few days refrigerated, as the colour fades.
Cassell's is describing, without naming it, the family of green compound butters that French kitchens knew as beurre de Montpellier and beurre vert — herbs and aromatics pounded with butter and coloured with the juice of raw greens, then chilled hard for the garnishing of cold buffet work. Such butters belonged to the era of the elaborate cold table, when a poached salmon or a galantine went to the sideboard under piped decoration and aspic, and the kitchen needed a paste that held a sharp edge from an icebox but softened on the tongue. The costing in pence and shillings, and the caveat that the price depends on butter, are characteristic of Cassell's, which priced nearly every entry so a household could budget a dish before committing to it. Note too the reliance on ice rather than refrigeration: this is a recipe from the period when a well-run kitchen bought ice by the block and an ice-safe was the only cold storage it had.