Julia Child's Beurre Blanc (White Butter Sauce)

Author Notes

When I first saw "beurre blanc" on the menu of Charleston restaurant in Baltimore, I immediately assumed it fell within the cheffy parameters. It hit all the marks: (1) a member of a collection of mysterious sauces (see albufera and mousseline) and (2) real estate next to "oyster and button mushroom fricasé," plus a minimally-styled menu. Et voilà!

But when my dish came to the table—pan-fried turbot on top of creamy yet crispy sautéed mushrooms and a pool of rich, lemony yellow sauce—I abandoned my confusion over its name and its components. All I cared about was making sure the silky butter made it onto every piece of fish and every single mushroom on my plate.

And, lucky for me, beurre blanc isn't so complicated after all. "However marvelous its flavor," wrote Julia Child in Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, "it is a butter sauce."

A classic sauce from Brittany, it looks like hollandaise "when you spoon it over your beautifully poached fish, but it is only warm flavored butter—butter emulsified, held in suspension by its strongly acid flavor base," explains Julia. White wine is reduced with white wine vinegar and shallots (and some chefs add cream for a stable, smooth sauce), then a whole lot of butter is whisked in slowly, piece by piece, and the mixture is seasoned with lemon juice.

But beyond that, beurre blanc is also better than the "butter sauce" (that is, melted butter) I used to toss with spaghetti.

As Francis Lam explains: "You make this sauce with enough tart ingredients to counteract the richness of the fat, so that it plays a trick on your tongue, where you can taste both but neither dominates."

It's a gentle dip into the rich, fatty flavors rather than a violent plunge into grease, and it's a cheffy-esque condiment with real-life applications: Use anywhere you'd like to drizzle food with (or drown it in) better-tasting butter: on roasted or steamed vegetables, on shrimp or fish, on chicken, or, on lobster or truffles.

And once you've mastered the basics, Lam has some suggestions for taking your beurre blanc game up a notch: Start with red wine instead of white (this will make even lovelier-sounding beurre rouge); use a fruit juice mixed with an aged vinegar; finish the sauce with herbs or spices or mashed anchovies.
—Sarah Jampel

Test Kitchen Notes

Though beurre nantais, also known as beurre blanc (meaning "white butter"), is not one of the five French mother sauces (béchamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomato, and velouté), it is a base recipe from which many other sauces are built. This French butter sauce in particular does not have an emulsifier and relies solely on the butter, though cream may be used to help stabilize it or at least start the emulsion.

"The original version, from Brittany, is almost always prepared with Muscadet wine," James Peterson writes in Sauces: Classic and Contemporary Sauce Making, which "has the crisp, clean flavor and the acidic edge essential to a successful beurre blanc. If Muscadet is unavailable or too expensive, other wines can be used, but if only wines containing relatively little acidity are available, it may be necessary to add a few additional drops of vinegar to wake up the sauce at the end." Appropriately, Julia Child's beurre blanc sauce recipe below calls for vinegar to ensure this acidity.

A note on holding a beurre blanc: According to Peterson, "When beurre blanc is held for any length of time, it will begin to thicken and must be thinned periodically with heavy cream, water, court-bouillon, or another appropriate liquid, either cold or hot." A broken sauce can be fixed by whisking in reduced heavy cream (heavy cream that has been boiled down)—though, Peterson writes, "this can be done only once." But all this to say, a beurre blanc sauce is not as fussy as it sounds, and learning how to make one will significantly enhance any plate of fish, steak, or vegetables.

This recipe is a part of Wine Week—seven days celebrating all things wine—presented in partnership by our friends at Bread & Butter Wines. —Food52