Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Butter

A butter substitute made from ground Brazilian nuts, olive oil, wheat flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Olive and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,100 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Vegetable Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grind the Brazilian nuts very fine in a mortar.

  2. Mix the ground nuts with olive oil to form a smooth jelly.

  3. Add the wheat flour and salt to the mixture.

  4. Rub the whole mixture into a smooth paste.

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

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.

  1. Olive + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Nuts + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nuts + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together186 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Brazilian nuts
Provide the main body and rich fat that give the butter its character.
Olive oil
Binds the ground nuts into a smooth jelly and adds fat for a spreadable texture.
Fine wheat flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture and helps it firm into a paste.

The step that matters

Rub the whole mixture into a smooth paste. Fine grinding and thorough rubbing spread the oil and flour evenly through the nuts. Uneven mixing leaves greasy or gritty patches and a poor texture.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, wheat, flour):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, wheat, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Wheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes