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Ravigote Butter
Place in a mortar one sprig of parsley, and tarragon, a very small quantity of chives and a like amount of chervil, one small peeled shallot, half a teaspoonful of anchovy essence, an ounce of good butter, and a half drop of spinach green, then pound them well together. After this, rub them through a fine sieve, and keep in a cool place.
A classic French compound butter, scaled for a single ounce — enough for two or three steaks. Multiply freely; the proportions hold.
- Start with soft butterAn ounce is two tablespoons. Bring it to a spreadable room temperature before pounding, or the herbs will simply skid around the mortar instead of breaking down.
- Spinach greenThis is vert d'épinards, a homemade colouring made by pounding raw spinach, straining the juice and heating it gently until the green solids coagulate. It is purely cosmetic here — omit it, or use a few spinach leaves pounded in with the herbs. The "half drop" is not a measurement anyone can follow literally; add colour until the butter is pale green and stop.
- Anchovy essenceA thin Victorian bottled seasoning, closer to a strained fish sauce than to a paste. Anchovy paste from a tube works, but use about a quarter teaspoon rather than a half, as it is far more concentrated and saltier.
- Chervil and chivesChervil goes limp and flavourless within a day or two of cutting and is often unavailable; if you cannot find it, lean on the tarragon and parsley rather than substituting dill. All herbs should be fresh — dried tarragon and chervil contribute nothing but grit.
- The sieve is not optionalRubbing the pounded mixture through a fine sieve is what makes this a smooth ravigote butter rather than a chopped-herb butter. Shallot and parsley stems stay fibrous no matter how long you pound. A food processor does the pounding faster but still leaves fibre behind, so sieve either way.
- SaltThe recipe adds no salt, leaving the anchovy essence to season the butter. Taste before you chill it; with salted butter you may want no additional salt at all.
- Storage and useRoll into a log in parchment and refrigerate up to three days, or freeze for a month and slice off coins as needed. Set a disc on grilled steak, fish or asparagus at the moment of serving — it is a finishing butter, not a cooking fat, and the herbs turn dull if heated.
Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to revive or perk up, and the name attaches to a whole family of sharp, herb-forward preparations: a warm velouté-based ravigote sauce, a cold vinaigrette version with capers and onion, and this compound butter. All of them lean on the same quartet of fines herbes — parsley, tarragon, chervil, chives — that defines nineteenth-century French seasoning. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's famed maître d'hôtel, published his Cook Book in 1896, and the presence of a recipe this small and this technical says a good deal about the book: it is less a domestic manual than a record of how a large hotel brigade worked, where a cook might be asked for an ounce of ravigote butter to finish a single plate. The half drop of spinach green is a reminder that in that kitchen the appearance of a garnish was held to matter as much as its taste.