Name: How to Preserve Butter
Ingredients: Butter; Coarse sea salt; 6 lbs salt; 2 gallons water

How to Preserve Butter

Ingredients

Butter
Coarse sea salt
6 lbs salt
2 gallons water

Directions

Prepare the butter

Mix butter with extra coarse sea salt.

Jar and brine

Sterilize vacuum bottles or jars and let them cool.
Fill the bottles or jars with butter, leaving 1 inch from the top, and seal with rubber rings and clips.
For brine, mix 6 lbs of salt with 2 gallons of water in a suitable container.
Keep the butter submerged in the brine using weights.

Use

Wash the butter in cold water before use.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides the fat and flavour that the preserving salt is worked into and carried by.
Coarse sea salt: Draws out moisture and inhibits microbial growth, which is how the butter keeps.

“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.