No. 565

Black Butter

Beurre Noir

This butter is used for eggs, brains or fish. Put four ounces of butter in an omelet pan over a slow fire, and when it falls after raising, skim it off, and set it again on the fire; as soon as it is black, but not burned, season it with salt and mignonette. Strain it through a fine strainer over the eggs, etc. Throw a dash of vinegar in a hot pan, and pour it over the eggs through a fine strainer.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A one-ingredient sauce whose whole difficulty is judging the moment the milk solids stop being brown and start being bitter. Ranhofer's "black, but not burned" is the hinge, and it happens fast.

The hinge: black means very dark brownButter cannot actually go black without burning; what is wanted is the stage just past beurre noisette, when the milk solids at the bottom are the colour of strong coffee and the smell turns nutty and faintly toasted. Pull the pan off the heat while it is still a shade lighter than you want, since the residual heat keeps working. Once it smells acrid it is bitter and cannot be rescued.
QuantityFour ounces of butter is one standard American stick, 113 g. The finished yield is somewhat less once the froth and solids are skimmed and the butter strained; the recipe does not say how many portions it dresses.
"When it falls after raising"Butter foams up as its water boils off, then subsides. That subsidence is the signal that the water is gone and browning is about to begin; skim the froth at that point so the solids colour visibly.
MignonettePoivre mignonnette is coarsely cracked pepper, usually understood as white peppercorns, though the term has also been applied to other coarse grinds. Crush them under a pan rather than grinding fine, and add them off the heat so they do not scorch.
"Slow fire" and the panMedium-low on a modern burner. Use a light-coloured or stainless pan rather than black cast iron or nonstick, since the only way to judge the stage is by watching the colour of the solids.
The vinegarThis is a separate step, not an addition to the butter. The original calls only for a dash of vinegar thrown into the hot pan, where it will reduce and spit within seconds; poured over the dish alongside the butter it supplies the sharpness that makes the sauce work with skate or eggs. Straining is worth doing for both, as the original says twice.
BrainsCalf's or beef brains, the classic partner here along with skate, are restricted or unavailable in many countries as a result of BSE controls. Where they are sold at all they come from certified young animals; otherwise use the butter on skate wing, poached eggs, or cauliflower.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of decades at Delmonico's in New York, and the book's long sequence of compound butters is straight French professional practice transplanted to an American kitchen. Beurre noir belongs to the same family as beurre noisette, distinguished only by degree of browning, and its most enduring use is raie au beurre noir — skate wing, whose faintly ammoniac sweetness is cut by browned butter and vinegar. The pairing with brains follows the same logic: a bland, soft, rich organ meat set against a sharp, toasted sauce. That Ranhofer specifies mignonette rather than simply pepper is characteristic of the book, which assumes a brigade that knows the difference between grinds and keeps several on hand.