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Ravigote Butter

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and chervil 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. Scald the parsley, tarragon, chervil, chives, and shallots in boiling water.

  2. Press out all the water and chop the herbs very finely.

Make the butter

  1. Pound the chopped herbs with the anchovies and butter until well combined.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to achieve a smooth consistency.

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. Tarragon + cherviltop 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
Provides fat and body, carrying the herb flavour and giving the mixture a smooth, spreadable texture.
Parsley
Supplies fresh, green herbal flavour and most of the bulk of the butter.
Tarragon
Adds its distinctive aniseed-like aroma, which defines the ravigote character.
Anchovies
Adds savoury depth, rounding out the herbs without making the butter taste fishy.

The step that matters

Press out all the water. Water left in the scalded herbs dilutes the butter and can make it watery or cause it to separate, so the herbs should be squeezed dry before chopping and pounding.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, 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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