No. 574

Fine Herb Butter, Cooked

Beurre aux Fines Herbes Cuites

Fry in some butter a few blanched and finely chopped shallots, add to them a few well chopped truffles and fresh mushrooms, and let the whole get quite cold, then add to it some fresh butter, salt, pepper, chopped parsley and lemon juice.

← No. 573 Crawfish Butter Hot & Cold Butters No. 575 Raw Fine Herb Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives no quantities, as he assumed a kitchen brigade that worked by eye. The method is sound; you supply the proportions.

Working proportionsFor 8 oz (2 sticks) softened unsalted butter, use 2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot, 2 oz mushrooms, about half an ounce of truffle if you have it, 2 tablespoons chopped parsley, the juice of half a lemon, and salt and pepper to taste. That yields enough to finish four to six portions of fish or grilled meat.
The hinge: let the cooked mixture go completely coldRanhofer says so explicitly, and it is the whole trick. Warm shallots and mushrooms melt the fresh butter into oil, and the finished butter will never firm up or slice cleanly. Spread the cooked mixture on a plate to cool fast.
Cook the moisture outMushrooms release a great deal of water. Fry them until the pan is dry and the mixture begins to sizzle rather than steam, or the butter will weep and separate when it rests.
Blanching the shallotsA brief drop into boiling water before chopping takes the raw bite out and softens them for the pan. Skip it only if your shallots are mild and very fresh.
TrufflesTruffles run right through Ranhofer's recipes, this one included. Preserved truffle peelings in their liquor are the practical substitute; truffle oil is not, as its aroma is harsh in cold butter. The butter is good without truffle at all, as a plain mushroom-shallot butter.
"Fresh butter"This means unsalted butter, brought to a soft, pliable state but never melted. Beat it smooth before folding in the cold mixture.
Shaping and keepingRoll in parchment into a cylinder, chill until firm, and cut coins as needed. It keeps a week refrigerated and freezes for three months; the parsley dulls in colour after a day or two but the flavour holds.
ServingA coin set on a hot grilled steak, chop or fish fillet at the moment of service, or stirred into a pan sauce off the heat. Do not boil it, or the emulsion breaks and the herbs stew.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) draws on his long service at Delmonico's in New York, and its long run of hot and cold butters is a fair picture of how a nineteenth-century French kitchen finished a plate: not with a separate sauce for every dish, but with a shelf of compound butters that could be cut and dropped on at the pass. Fines herbes in classical usage means the quartet of parsley, chervil, tarragon and chives, though by Ranhofer's day the phrase had loosened to mean almost any fine chopped aromatic garnish, and here it stretches to cover shallot, mushroom and truffle. The distinction between this entry and No. 575, the raw version, is entirely one of cooking the aromatics first: heat drives off the mushrooms' water and takes the rawness from the shallot, giving a rounder, less sharp butter suited to grilled meats. The pairing of the two recipes side by side is characteristic of the book, which is organised as a professional reference.