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Bercy Butter

A butter sauce made with white wine, shallots, parsley, beef marrow, and lemon juice, served with grilled beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bercy Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a small saucepan, combine the white wine and blanched shallots.

  2. Reduce the wine by half over medium heat.

Finish the butter

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the softened butter until creamy.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, poached beef marrow, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Do not completely melt the butter; serve with grilled beef.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 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
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body that carries the other flavors.
White wine
Reduced to concentrate its flavor and add acidity to the shallot base.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that softens when blanched and reduced in wine.
Beef marrow
Adds a rich, savory fattiness that gives the butter depth.

The step that matters

Do not completely melt the butter. Softened butter that stays partly solid holds its emulsified, creamy texture. Fully melted butter separates into fat and liquid, so the sauce turns oily and loses its body.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, butter, parsley, beef, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, butter, parsley, beef, pepper, lemon. 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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