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Bourguignonne Butter
Place in a mortar three sound, peeled shallot, a half bean garlic, two branches parsley, a branch chervil and six branches chives. Thoroughly pound until exceedingly smooth, add an ounce butter, half saltspoon salt, and briskly pound again for one minute. Press butter through sieve into a bowl, add three tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, mix until well amalgamated and use as required.
A compound butter of the snail-butter family, pounded rather than creamed. The whole point is texture: everything must be reduced to a paste before the butter goes in, or the finished butter will be stringy with fibres of chive and shallot.
- Quantities in modern termsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so half a saltspoon is an eighth. "Half bean garlic" means half a clove. An ounce of butter is two tablespoons.
- The butter is deliberately scantThe butter is scant -- Two tablespoons of butter against three shallots and a fistful of herbs gives something closer to a green paste than a spreadable butter. If you want it to behave like classic escargot butter, you will need considerably more butter for this quantity of aromatics.
- Mortar, or a substituteA small food processor will do it, but it tends to shred rather than crush and leaves the herbs weeping. Pounding shallot and garlic with the salt first, then adding the leaves, gets the smoothness the recipe insists on.
- Why it goes through a sievePressing the pounded mixture through a fine sieve removes shallot fibre and chive skins. Skip it and the butter reads coarse on the tongue; a rubber spatula and a drum sieve or fine-mesh strainer is quicker than it sounds.
- The breadcrumbsFresh crumbs, not dried, and added last. They give body and help the mixture hold its shape under heat rather than running off.
- ChervilRarely stocked, and its faint anise note is what goes missing without it. Tarragon in about half the quantity is a common substitute.
- Yield and useRoughly a third of a cup as written -- enough for a dozen or so snails, or to melt over steaks or grilled fish. It keeps a few days refrigerated and freezes well rolled in parchment and sliced into coins.
The name points to Burgundy, and this is essentially the beurre d'escargot that Burgundian cooks pack into snail shells before baking — shallot, garlic, parsley and butter, with breadcrumbs to hold everything in place and crisp on top. Filippini's International Cook Book catalogues great numbers of such preparations as building blocks rather than finished dishes, in the manner of the professional kitchens of his day: a cook was expected to keep a stock of named butters, sauces and garnishes and reach for them by name. The instruction to pound in a mortar and press through a sieve is a reminder of how much of pre-electric restaurant work was patient reduction by hand.