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Sauce

Beurre Noir, or Brown Butter

A sauce made by browning butter and adding vinegar, optionally with parsley for fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Beurre Noir, or Brown Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brown butter

  1. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until it turns brown but does not burn.

  2. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

Finish the sauce

  1. Heat the vinegar in a separate container until hot but not boiling.

  2. Pour the hot vinegar into the browned butter and heat both together.

  3. For poached eggs, it is ready to use; for fish, add the chopped parsley before serving.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + fishtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Its milk solids toast as it browns, giving a nutty flavor, and it supplies the rich fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich butter and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Browning the butter without burning it. The milk solids in butter darken quickly once they start to brown. Keeping the heat at medium and watching closely stops them before they scorch, which would leave a bitter taste instead of a nutty one.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, fish):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Pepperfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, fish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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