Name: Beurre blanc nantais (home recipe)
Prep time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 4 large shallots, very finely chopped; 100ml dry white wine, ideally Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie; 50ml white wine vinegar; 250g cold unsalted butter, cut into 2cm cubes and kept in the fridge; Fine sea salt; White pepper; Optional: 2 tablespoons double cream, as insurance against splitting

History

The origin story attached to beurre blanc belongs to Clémence Lefeuvre, a cook born at La Chebuette in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, upriver from Nantes, who was working there around 1890. The version her family told is that a customer complained about her plain melted-butter sauce, and that she answered it by reducing shallots with vinegar first and mounting the butter into that. Whether or not any single cook can be said to have invented an emulsion, the sauce spread from that stretch of river into Nantes dining rooms and then into the wider French repertoire. A confrérie now exists in the city to defend it.

Common allergens: Dairy, Sulphites, Fish

Make it at home

Yield 4Hands-on 20 minTotal 25 minDifficulty Intermediate

Ingredients

4 large shallots, very finely chopped
100ml dry white wine, ideally Muscadet Sèvre et Maine sur lie
50ml white wine vinegar
250g cold unsalted butter, cut into 2cm cubes and kept in the fridge
Fine sea salt
White pepper
Optional: 2 tablespoons double cream, as insurance against splitting

Method

Put the shallots, wine and vinegar in a heavy, wide saucepan. Simmer over a medium heat until the liquid has almost gone and the shallots sit in a wet, syrupy mass, roughly 8 to 10 minutes. This reduction is the whole sauce, so do not rush it.
If you are using the cream, add it now and bring back to a bare simmer for 30 seconds. It stabilises the emulsion and makes the sauce much harder to break.
Drop the heat as low as it will go. Add two cubes of cold butter and whisk continuously until they have melted into the reduction and it looks glossy rather than oily.
Keep adding butter two or three cubes at a time, whisking constantly and never letting the pan get hot enough to bubble. The sauce should thicken and pale as it goes. Take the pan off the heat now and then if it starts to feel warm.
When all the butter is in, season with salt and white pepper. Leave the shallots in for a rustic Loire version, or pass it through a fine sieve for a smooth one. Serve at once over poached or roasted pike, sandre, shad or turbot.

Tip from the editors. The sauce breaks from heat, not cold. If it looks oily, pull the pan off and whisk in one more cold cube; if it splits, whisk it slowly into a fresh reduction.