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Montpellier Butter
Thoroughly wash two branches parsley, a branch chervil, eight tarragon leaves, eight branches chives and the leaves from a branch watercress. Drain and plunge in boiling water for two minutes, drain on sieve, place in a cloth and press out water. Place herbs in mortar with a tablespoon capers, chopped pickle, yolks of two cold hard-boiled eggs and pound to a pulp. Remove and press through sieve into a bowl, add three-quarters ounce fresh butter, sharply beat with wooden spoon for five minutes, then use as required.
A classic French compound butter for cold fish, given here in shorthand that assumes a professional garde-manger. Two things decide whether it works: the herbs must be blanched and squeezed bone-dry, and the mixture must be worked smooth before the butter goes in.
- "Branch" means sprigTwo branches parsley is two decent sprigs, not two stems from the bunch's base. Chervil is sold in small bunches at farmers' markets and some groceries; if you cannot find it, use a little more parsley plus a few tarragon leaves rather than substituting dried.
- The blanching is not optionalTwo minutes in boiling water sets the chlorophyll so the butter stays green rather than turning olive within a day, and it takes the raw edge off the chives. Shock in ice water, then wring the herbs in a towel until no more moisture comes out; residual water will make the butter break.
- The butter quantity looks wrongThe butter quantity looks low -- Three-quarters of an ounce is about a tablespoon and a half, far less butter than the herbs, capers, pickle and two yolks would absorb. The classic versions of beurre de Montpellier are proportionally much richer in butter than this. Whether the printed figure is a misprint or a deliberately lean reading, expect to add butter until you have a spreadable paste.
- Mortar or food processorA small food processor does the pounding in seconds, but it will not give the silk of a sieved paste. If you want the smooth finish the recipe asks for, process first, then push the mixture through a fine sieve with a rubber spatula before beating in the butter.
- Beat cold, not warmThe five minutes of sharp beating with a wooden spoon is an emulsifying step, working the yolk and butter together. Use butter at cool room temperature; if it softens to grease the mixture separates and no amount of beating brings it back.
- What the recipe leaves outThe classic published versions include anchovy, a little garlic or shallot, and a thread of oil and vinegar. Filippini's is a plainer reading. A mashed anchovy fillet and a few drops of tarragon vinegar are within the tradition if the result tastes flat.
- Yield and useAs written it makes a small ramekin's worth. Serve cold with poached salmon, trout or cold chicken, or pipe it in rosettes onto a fish platter. It keeps three or four days covered in the refrigerator, and rolls into a log for freezing.
Beurre de Montpellier is a fixture of the French cold kitchen, a green herb-and-egg butter used to mask and decorate poached fish on the buffet platters that defined nineteenth-century garde-manger work. Its connection to the city of Montpellier is traditional rather than documented, and the recipe is usually traced through Carême and Escoffier, both of whom give richer versions with anchovy and garlic worked in. It appears in a book like this one because an American cook of 1906 aspiring to hotel standards was expected to know the French cold-table repertoire, even if the household kitchen rarely called for it. The blanch-and-pound-and-sieve method is pure professional practice: labour-intensive, dependent on a mortar, and aimed at a colour and a texture that no shortcut of the period could reproduce.