It is in a little village along the Loire riverbanks, La Chebuette, that in 1890, a local lady named Clemence Lefeuvre, a renowned cook from the Nantes region, invented the “beurre blanc”.
The ingredients she used are simple and of good quality: some slightly salted butter finely chopped gray shallots, some spirit vinegar, and a pinch of pepper.
Today, even though we are familiar with her recipe, her secret, as it is often the case in cooking, depended only from a personal knack! This led Aristide Briand, a political figure of his time, a native from Nantes area, a Nobel price recipient and a gourmet cuisine lover, to declare, once he was informed of Clemence’s death: “Her loss is somewhat similar to a national mourning”.