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Sauce

Montfelier or Green Butter

A green butter sauce made with herbs, anchovies, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Montfelier or Green Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Blanch the tarragon, chervil, parsley, fennel, and shallot together, then strain and dry.

Make the butter

  1. In a bowl, combine the dried herbs and shallot with the egg yolks, salad oil, anchovies, butter, capers, salt, gherkins, sap-green, and red pepper.

  2. Pound the mixture together and pass it through a fine sieve.

  3. Set the mixture in a cool place to firm up 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. Tarragon + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together824 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together266 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the rich base that firms when chilled and carries the herb flavour.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and butter, giving the mixture a smooth, bound texture.
Salad oil
Adds fluidity to the emulsion, keeping it smooth and spreadable.
Anchovies
Contribute savoury depth and saltiness that rounds out the herbs.

The step that matters

Pounding and sieving the mixture. Thorough pounding and passing through a fine sieve break down the herbs and fibres, producing a smooth, evenly emulsified butter without green flecks or lumps.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Fennelthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Winter savoryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tarragon, chervil, parsley, shallot, egg, butter, capers. 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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