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Olive and Anchovy Butter
Stone some French olives, wash and chop them. Skin and bone an equal quantity of anchovies, chop them also, and mix them with the olives. Pour the mixture into a mortar with half its bulk of fresh butter and pound all together until perfectly smooth. Pass the mixture through a fine hair-sieve and shape it into small balls. Keep them on a dish which is placed over ice until they are ready to serve. This butter is very nice served with toast.
A compound butter of the old hotel pantry, requiring no heat and very little equipment beyond something to pound with. The whole point is texture: it must be smooth enough to hold a shaped ball without weeping oil.
- ProportionsEqual quantities of stoned olives and anchovy fillets, then butter equal to half the combined bulk. For a practical batch: 1/2 cup chopped olives, 1/2 cup chopped anchovy, 1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter. That yields something over a cup of finished butter once sieved, enough for eight to ten servings with toast.
- "French olives"Most likely green olives in brine, the large mild sort; Picholine or Lucques are a fair modern stand-in. Cured black olives are a different proposition and can carry enough salt or bitterness to overwhelm the anchovy.
- AnchoviesThe instruction to skin and bone them implies whole salt-packed fish rather than prepared fillets. Tinned fillets in oil are already boned; drain them well and skip that step. Salt-packed fillets should be rinsed and soaked briefly, or the butter will be inedibly salty.
- Wash the olivesNot fussiness. Brine clinging to the cut surfaces carries enough salt to unbalance the mixture. Drain and pat the olives dry before pounding.
- Butter temperatureSoft but not melted, around 65F. Butter that has gone greasy will not emulsify with the paste, and the mixture will separate as it chills.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in thirty seconds, but it will not replace the sieve. Pushing the paste through a fine mesh with a rubber spatula removes olive skin and anchovy fibre and is what gives this its characteristic silkiness. It is tedious and it is the difference between this and a rough tapenade.
- Shaping and holdingChill the sieved paste until firm enough to handle, then roll small balls with cool hands or two spoons. A dish set over ice is a service arrangement; refrigerate at 40F or below for storage, and use within three or four days.
- ServingThin, dry toast, unsalted or lightly salted. One ball per person as a savoury or with cocktails; the mixture is intensely salty and a little goes a long way.
Compound butters — beurres composés — were a fixed department of the classical hotel kitchen, kept ready in the garde-manger to finish grilled meats, dress canapés or fill out a cold buffet. Escoffier catalogued dozens of them, and Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf worked in the same French idiom for a New York clientele that expected it. Anchovy butter was one of the group; adding olives pushes it toward the Provençal, and the mixture is close kin to tapenade, though tapenade takes its name from the capers (tapeno in Provençal) that this version leaves out. The instruction to keep the balls on a dish over ice is a reminder of what the period meant by refrigeration: block ice in the pantry, and butter that would not survive an August afternoon on the sideboard.