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Chateaubriand Butter

A butter-based sauce made with wine, shallots, thyme, bay leaf, mushroom trimmings, veal gravy, and tarragon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 602 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Chateaubriand Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, reduce the white wine with shallots, thyme, bay leaf, and mushroom trimmings by two-thirds.

  2. Add the veal gravy and reduce the mixture to half.

  3. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

Finish the butter

  1. Remove from heat and stir in the Maître d'Hôtel butter and chopped tarragon until well combined.

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. Shallot + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together528 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

White wine
Reduces to a concentrated, acidic base that carries the aromatics' flavour.
Veal gravy
Adds body and savoury depth to the reduced sauce.
Maître d'hôtel butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a herby, buttery richness.
Mushroom trimmings
Contribute earthy, umami flavour during the reduction.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter off the heat. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If the sauce is too hot when it is added, the butter can separate and turn greasy instead of forming a smooth, glossy sauce.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, shallot, thyme, mushroom, veal, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Tarragonthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, shallot, thyme, mushroom, veal, butter. 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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