The sauce Nantes gave French cooking: a hard reduction of shallots in white wine and vinegar, then cold butter beaten in cube by cube until it thickens into a pale, tart emulsion for river fish.
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.
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