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Sauce Hollandaise, Vert-Pre
Have two and a half ounces butter, fresh if possible, or salted, thoroughly wash it in cold, fresh water, divide in two even parts, and place half in a bowl to lightly melt on range shelf. Place in a mortar two well-washed branches parsley, one branch chervil, one peeled shallot and six watercress leaves. Thoroughly pound these herbs till quite smooth, then add the unused butter, pound again for one minute, then press butter through fine sieve into a bowl.
Place in a small saucepan two egg yolks, one tablespoon vinegar and one teaspoon lemon juice. Place pan on corner of range, sharply whisk for five minutes, and gradually pour in drop by drop the melted butter. When the melted butter is all dropped in add also little by little the green butter and briskly whisk while adding both. Remove to table, mix for three minutes longer, press sauce through a cloth into bowl and serve.
A herb-green hollandaise built the old way, with a compound butter pounded in a mortar rather than chopped herbs stirred in at the end. Filippini's instructions assume a coal range with hot and cool zones; the whole trick is keeping the yolks below the point where they scramble.
- The hinge: gentle, indirect heat"Corner of range" means the coolest part of the stovetop. Use a bowl over barely simmering water, or the lowest possible burner setting, and keep the yolk mixture around 150-160F. Above about 180F the yolks curdle and the emulsion is finished.
- QuantitiesTwo and a half ounces of butter is 5 tablespoons, split into two portions of about 2.5 tablespoons each. Two yolks to that much butter gives a thick, yolk-forward sauce by modern standards.
- Washing the butterKneading butter in cold water rinses out buttermilk and surplus salt. It mattered when butter was farm-made and inconsistently salted; with modern unsalted butter it can be skipped entirely.
- The green butterPounding parsley, chervil, shallot and watercress with raw butter in a mortar is the classic beurre vert method, and it extracts far more colour and flavour than chopping. A small food processor works, but chill the butter first so it does not break, and pass it through a sieve as directed to remove the fibrous stalk material.
- ChervilRarely stocked in supermarkets. Use a little extra parsley plus a few tarragon leaves, which approximates chervil's faint anise note; do not substitute dried.
- "Lightly melt"The first portion should be just liquid and barely warm, not hot and not browned. Hot butter poured into warm yolks is the most common cause of a split sauce.
- Straining and seasoningThe final pass through a cloth removes any herb fibre and gives the smooth finish the recipe is after. No salt is specified, and the recipe permits salted butter; season at the end, after straining, and taste for acid before adding more lemon.
- Yield and holdingRoughly half a cup, enough for two to four servings with poached fish or asparagus. Hollandaise does not survive chilling and re-warming; hold it barely warm for a short time only and make it as close to service as possible.
Vert-pré means "green meadow," and in French kitchen usage it labels anything brought to the plate green: a grilled steak garnished with watercress and straw potatoes, a maître d'hôtel butter worked with herbs, or, as here, a hollandaise tinted and flavoured with a pounded herb butter. The technique of pounding raw herbs into butter and forcing the result through a sieve is the same one behind the classic beurres composés such as beurre de Chivry, and it predates the food processor by centuries; the mortar ruptures the leaf cells in a way a knife does not, so the butter takes up both the colour and the volatile oils. Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, wrote for cooks working on coal ranges, which is why the recipe speaks of the range shelf and the corner of the range rather than giving any temperature at all — the cook was expected to know which patch of iron was which.