Kitchen terms · French cuisine
Monter au beurre
Finishing a sauce by whisking or stirring in butter at the very end of cooking.
At a glance
- Origin
- Fr. monter une sauce au beurre (TLFi); the phrase monter une sauce is recorded in 1926 in the Larousse ménager, there of mayonnaise.
- Production
- Butter is whisked or stirred into a finished hot sauce at the end.
- Use
- Brown and white sauces, reductions and pan juices just before serving.
- Substitutes
- Liaison with egg yolk; thickening with roux.
French monter, to climb or to raise, has several culinary senses. The Trésor de la langue française lists making mayonnaise, whisking egg whites and the phrase monter une sauce au beurre, finishing a sauce with butter; it records the bare phrase monter une sauce from the Larousse ménager of 1926, there of mayonnaise.
Escoffier adds butter to sauces at the last moment. One of his game sauces is strained and only “buttered slightly at the last moment”, and for allemande sauce he warns explicitly that butter added earlier would make it turn. The same applies when allemande is served as a finished sauce rather than as a base for others: cream and butter go in only at the end. Mounting therefore does not thicken a sauce with flour or yolk but finishes it with fat.