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Parsley Butter
3 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon lemon-juice 1 tablespoon chopped parsley 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 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 of the plainest kind, and one of the few sauces in an old book that needs no adjustment at all beyond technique.
- Butter temperature"Cream butter" means soft enough to beat smooth with a spoon, around 65F, not melted. If it breaks or looks oily the lemon-juice will not emulsify into it and you will get a greasy pool on the fish.
- Add the acid slowlyWork the lemon-juice in a little at a time; a tablespoon of juice into three of butter is about as much as the butter will readily take. The recipe cuts it to half a tablespoon for potato balls, without saying why.
- Salt levelHalf a teaspoon into three tablespoons of butter is assertive by modern taste. The recipe does not say whether the butter is salted; if yours is, start with a quarter teaspoon and taste.
- ParsleyFlat-leaf or curly both work; dry the leaves thoroughly before chopping or the water will thin the butter. Dried parsley is not a substitute here since the point is fresh green flavour.
- Yield and servingAbout a quarter cup, enough for two to four fish fillets. Roll it in parchment into a log, chill, and cut coins to set on the hot fish so it melts at the table.
- KeepingRefrigerated it holds three or four days before the parsley darkens; wrapped tightly it freezes for a couple of months.
Compound butters like this are the simplest survivors of nineteenth-century French sauce practice: beurre maître d'hôtel is butter, parsley, lemon and seasoning in much the same combination, and it appears in American cookbooks of the period as a finish for grilled or fried fish.