Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓
Melted Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Melt the butter gently until just melted.
Stir in the table salt and lemon juice.
Serve immediately as a fish sauce.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Provides fat and rich flavour, and carries the sauce's texture when melted.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour.
The step that matters
Melt the butter gently until just melted. Butter is an emulsion of fat, water and milk solids. High heat can scorch the milk solids and make the sauce taste burnt, and overheating can cause it to separate into greasy fat and liquid.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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