Beurre blanc: Saucy versatility for lazy sophisticates

Beurre blanc is one of the great culinary ironies -- a sauce as versatile and endlessly chic as the little black dress but nearly as simple to make as cutting up a stick of butter. (I don't actually have a little black dress, but I do have butter, so this is as chic as I get.) Which leads us to its next irony: It was popularized in the '60s and '70s by French chefs looking to lighten their cuisine, pooling it onto plates instead of their traditional, roux-heavy sauces, which means that it's a lightener that's 85 percent butter.


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