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Ravigote Butter

A French herb butter made with chervil, parsley, tarragon, pimpernel, chives, shallots, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Blanch the herbs

  1. Bring a small saucepan of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the chervil, parsley, tarragon, pimpernel, chives, and shallots.

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

  4. Press the herbs in a towel to remove excess water.

Make the butter

  1. Pound the herbs in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Mix the herb puree with the half-melted butter until well combined.

  3. Pass the mixture through a fine 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

Chervil
Adds a delicate, fresh anise-like aroma that defines the butter's flavour.
Parsley
Contributes bright green colour and a fresh, mild herbal flavour.
Tarragon
Provides the characteristic aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour of ravigote.
Chives
Adds a mild onion-like freshness and aroma.
Butter
Carries the herb flavour and gives the finished butter a rich, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Press the herbs dry. Blanched herbs hold a lot of water. Leftover moisture would dilute the butter and can make it split or spoil faster, so the herbs should be squeezed thoroughly before pounding.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, tarragon, chive, shallot, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, tarragon, chive, shallot, 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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