Name: To Preserve Butter for Winter
Ingredients: 1 part coarse sea salt; 1 part saltpetre; 1 part fine loaf sugar; butter

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 ↓

To Preserve Butter for Winter

Ingredients

1 part coarse sea salt
1 part saltpetre
1 part fine loaf sugar
butter

Directions

Make the cure

Mix equal quantities of coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and fine loaf sugar well.

Pack and store

Pack the butter, using 1 ounce of the mixture for every pound of butter.
Cover the packed butter with thick cloths.
Store in a cool place until late spring.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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: The fat being preserved; the cure is packed into it to slow spoilage over time.
Saltpetre: Acts as a curing agent that helps inhibit spoilage bacteria in the packed butter.
Coarse sea salt: Draws out moisture and inhibits microbial growth, helping the butter keep longer.

“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.