Sharp, briny, stinky. That’s anchovies and olives for me. I’ve tried to like these foods, but I still avoid them. This week, the curriculum that I’m following called for a discussion of compound butters, and the only recipe in Le Cordon Bleu at Home that contained a compound butter was Steak Mirabeau. The steak part was great, but the anchovy butter…not so good. So, I decided to make a bunch of other compound butters to have on hand and compare.Compound Butters
Compound butter is a fancy name for flavored butter. They’re a quick and easy way to add a burst of flavor to meat or vegetables. Michael Ruhlman has a great description in his book Elements of Cooking.
There are some standard compound butters, but the possibilities for flavoring butter are endless. Some famous compound butters are garlic butter, Maître d’Hôtel butter, and Escargot butter. 101 Cookbooks has some interesting ideas for flavor combinations. For this Mirabeau steak, the recipe called for anchovy butter. {Mirabeau means the dish has anchovies and olives.}
Compound butters don’t have to be just savory. You can also make sweet compound butters such as Honey butter or Orange butter, which contains orange zest, orange liqueur, orange juice, and icing sugar.
When making compound butter, don’t melt the butter in the microwave. You want room temperature butter, not melted butter. After adding the flavorings, you can roll it in wax paper, parchment paper, or plastic wrap and return it to the refrigerator to set. You can store it in the freezer for up to one month and slice off what you need.
Tips: If the compound butter is frozen, you can grate it onto the meat or vegetables. Another tip was to tie up compound butter in cheesecloth and rub it over corn on the cob.
Watch a ProAlthough simple to make, I found a video showing how to make compound butter.
Café de Paris Butter
One famous compound butter is called Café de Paris butter. It consists of about 20 different ingredients all whipped into the butter, including herbs, spices, mustard, marjoram, dill, rosemary, tarragon, paprika, capers, chives, curry powder, parsley, shallots, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and anchovies. According to this article, in 1941, Freddy Dumont created this compound butter at the Restaurant Café de Paris in Geneva. It became such a hit that it became difficult to get a reservation. It is described as “artery-clogging, chin-glisteningly good.”
SidesThe best parts of this recipe were the side dishes, especially the fried onions. After slicing the onions into ¼-inch rings, I sprinkled them with salt, pepper, and chopped parsley. Then, I soaked them in milk for 20 minutes. After drying them with a paper towel and dredging them with flour, I deep fried them in 360˚F oil until they were brown and crispy.
The other side dish was baked tomatoes. I just pierced the tops with an “x”, sprinkled them with salt and pepper and added a dollop of butter. Then, I baked them in a 400˚F oven for 10-15 minutes. They taste sweet and gooey after baking.
If you like anchovies and olives, you can wrap an anchovy around a pitted olive for a touch of elegance as a garnish. A fistful of watercress adds some color, crunch, and spice to the plate as well.
Recipe: Steak Mirabeau (Beef Tenderloin Steaks with Anchovy Butter)
You can find the recipe for Steak Mirabeau (Beef Tenderloin Steaks with Anchovy Butter) in the book Le
Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!Tasting Notes
“Hold the anchovies” {and olives}!
With that, I'll leave you with an award-winning haiku...
first date–
the little pile
of anchovies
—Roberta Beary,
from The Unworn Necklace (Snapshots Press, 2007);
Frogpond (Winter 2007), 1st Place,
Haiku Society of America’s 2006 Gerald Brady Senryu Contest
(found here)
• Brochet au beurre blanc (Whole Poached Pike with White Butter Sauce) page 307-308 {discussion of Beurre blanc (Emulsified butter with shallots) page 192}
. . . . . . . . . .
Running total: $669.38 + $30.82 (2 steaks) $11.42 (Mirabeau, onions, tomatoes) = $711.62
Butter used so far: 7 pounds, 11 tablespoons {I didn't add all the pounds of butter I used in making all the different compound butters this week since only a 1/4 of a pound was required for the recipe. Just thought you'd like to know if you're playing along and counting your cholesterol points!}
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