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Ravigote Butter

A butter flavored with chervil, parsley, tarragon, pimpernel, chives, shallots, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ravigote Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Put chervil, parsley, tarragon, pimpernel, chives, and shallots into a small saucepan of salted, boiling water.

  2. Boil quickly for 2 minutes, then drain and cool in cold water.

  3. Press in a towel to remove all water, then pound in a mortar.

Make the butter

  1. Add half-melted butter to the herb puree and mix well.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Tarragon + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying the herb flavour and giving the mixture a smooth, spreadable texture.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sharpness that supports the herbs without overpowering them.

The step that matters

Remove all water before pounding. Water left in the blanched herbs dilutes the butter and makes the mixture loose and watery. Pressing the herbs dry in a towel keeps the butter emulsion thick and the flavour concentrated.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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