No. 583

Ravigote or Green Butter

Beurre a la Ravigote ou Beurre Vert

Made with one ounce of tarragon, two ounces of chervil, one ounce of chives, well washed, half an ounce of blanched parsley leaves, and one ounce of chopped and blanched shallot; pound all these herbs with half a pound of butter, and color it with some spinach green strained through a sieve.

← No. 582 Montpellier Butter Hot & Cold Butters No. 584 Saffron Butter →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French compound butter from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built on soft herbs and colored with spinach extract rather than any green dye. It comes together in minutes in a food processor, though the herb prep is where the work is.

Weigh the herbs, don't measure by volumeAn ounce of tarragon or chives is a substantial handful once picked from the stems, roughly a cup or more loosely packed. The recipe gives weights rather than volumes; it only says 'leaves' of the parsley, so whether the other weights are for picked leaves or trimmed bunches is a judgement call — picked leaves is the likelier reading.
Blanch and squeeze dryThe parsley and shallot are specified blanched, and the tarragon, chervil and chives benefit from the same treatment: thirty seconds in boiling water, straight into ice water, then wrung out hard in a towel. Blanching sets the color and takes the raw edge off the shallot; any water left in the herbs will make the butter break.
Spinach greenThis is vert d'épinards, made by pounding raw spinach, pressing out the juice, and heating it gently until the green solids coagulate, then straining them off through a cloth. It is a coloring agent with almost no flavor. A tablespoon or two of very finely puréed blanched spinach, squeezed dry, gets you close.
Chervil substitutionChervil can be hard to find and is highly perishable. If none is available, use a little more parsley plus a small pinch of extra tarragon rather than doubling the tarragon outright, which would dominate.
Pounding versus processingA mortar gives a smoother, more emulsified paste; a food processor gives a flecked butter, which is attractive but coarser. Either way the butter should be at cool room temperature, not melted, or it will separate.
Yield and keepingAbout 10 to 12 ounces of finished butter — enough for twelve to sixteen servings. Roll it in parchment into a cylinder and refrigerate a week, or freeze for three months; slice into coins as needed.
How it was usedGreen butters of this kind served for grilled fish and steaks, for finishing sauces, and for canapés and cold buffet work. The recipe itself specifies no use.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York across two spells, roughly 1862–1876 and again 1879–1896, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his professional reference book — the compound butters appear as a numbered arsenal, each one a building block for dozens of dishes later in the volume. Ravigote comes from the French ravigoter, to revive or perk up, and the name attaches to a whole family of sharp green preparations: a warm velouté-based ravigote sauce, a cold vinaigrette version with capers, and this butter. The green here is deliberately manufactured rather than natural: vert d'épinards, spinach coagulated from its own juice, was a common nineteenth-century device for tinting butters, sauces and forcemeats, and appears in Carême and Escoffier as well. Its position between Montpellier butter (No. 582) and saffron butter (No. 584) shows the logic of the section — a professional cook working through the color range.