Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Preserving Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Mix
Combine the salt, sugar, and saltpetre in a large bowl.
Add the butter and mix well until fully combined.
Cure
Transfer the mixture to a container and seal it tightly.
Let it sit for one month before using.
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.
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Makes up the bulk of the dish and carries the salt through it evenly.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and inhibits bacterial growth, preserving the butter.
- Saltpetre
- Helps inhibit bacterial growth during curing.
- Sugar
- Softens the sharpness of the salt and adds mild sweetness.
The step that matters
Mixing the salt evenly into the butter. Salt is what preserves the butter, so any pockets of unmixed salt leave some areas under-salted and more prone to spoiling. Mixing until fully combined distributes the salt and sugar evenly through the whole batch.
“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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