No. 775

Butter Fresh Molded

Beurre Frais Moule

The butter must be of the very best quality, without a particle of salt, and used the same day it is made.

For Shells.—Grate with a table knife a piece of firm but not too hard butter; when there is sufficient on the blade of the knife, remove it with the finger to place it immediately on a butter dish or in ice water.

For Pats.—Divide a pound of butter into sixteen equal parts, or one ounce for each. The butter must be well worked, neither too soft nor too hard; set it into cold water, with two grooved wooden pallets lift out a piece of butter the size of a ball half an inch in diameter, press the butter between the two pallets, turn it round lightly, and remove the surplus with the first finger of the right hand; when a pat is formed, take it out and throw it into cold water.

For Vermicelli Butter.—Put butter not too hard into a machine called a butter syringe, having a tin perforated sheet with holes three thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter; push the butter through these so that it falls into the water.

To Serve it in Small Stone Pots.—Fill some small gray stone pots with butter and cover with pieces of fine muslin; these are placed as they are on the table. Butter is often served, drained, and laid on grape leaves, or simply in butter dishes with small pieces of very clean ice around.

← No. 774 Beets Cold Side Dishes No. 776 Red and White Cabbage, English Style, and Ma →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a table-service preparation rather than a cooked dish: four ways of presenting fresh unsalted butter. The whole thing turns on temperature, and everything else is equipment.

The hinge: butter temperatureButter must be plastic but cold. Warmer and the curls slump and the pats smear; colder and the knife blade chatters instead of shaving. Work in the coolest corner of the kitchen and re-chill the block whenever it starts to shine.
Ice water is the setting bathPats and vermicelli strands are dropped into cold water the moment they are formed, and shells may go there too (the recipe allows either the water or a butter dish). This firms the surface and keeps the pieces from fusing. Use water with ice floating in it, and drain the finished shapes before they go to the dish.
"Grooved wooden pallets"These are butter hands, also called Scotch hands: two ridged wooden paddles sold for the purpose. Soak them in ice water for half an hour first or the butter will stick to the dry wood.
"Butter syringe"A metal press with interchangeable perforated plates, of the same family as the cookie press. The 3/32-inch holes give strands about the thickness of thick spaghetti — a piping bag fitted with a small plain or multi-hole tip does the same work.
Pat sizeOne pound divided sixteen ways gives 1-ounce pats, about two tablespoons each — generous by current standards, where a restaurant pat runs half that. Note that the recipe's "ball half an inch in diameter" is far smaller than an ounce; the two measurements in the original do not agree.
Unsalted butter, and why the same dayUnsalted butter has no preservative and picks up odors quickly, which is the sense of Ranhofer's insistence that it be used the day it is made. Buy it fresh and keep it wrapped and covered until the moment of shaping.
Stone pots and grape leavesThe "small gray stone pots" are stoneware crocks, most likely salt-glazed; they stay cool and were sent to table as they were. Grape leaves are a serving liner, not a flavoring; rinse and dry them, and note that vine leaves sold in brine are too salty and limp for the purpose.
QuantityA pound yields sixteen pats, one apiece for a table of sixteen. Shells and vermicelli have no fixed count — figure about an ounce of butter per diner and shape a little extra, since the failures go straight back into the block.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's record of the kitchen at Delmonico's, and this entry belongs to the part of that kitchen concerned with how a table looked before anyone sat down. In the nineteenth century butter arrived from the dairy in bulk rather than in stamped quarter-pound sticks, so shaping it was routine dairy and pantry work, and the tools included grooved Scotch hands, ridged wooden molds carved with wheat sheaves or cows, and the press Ranhofer calls a syringe. Serving butter on a bed of ice or on vine leaves is a nod to the same problem: refrigeration at the table did not exist, and butter that softened in a warm dining room looked, and tasted, poor. Ranhofer's insistence on unsalted butter used the day it is churned reflects a period distinction that has largely disappeared from American shops, where salted butter was the keeping grade and sweet butter the luxury one.