Skip to main content
Main

Pikante-Butter

A butter spread flavored with anchovies, gherkins, mustard, parsley, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pikante-Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the anchovies and gherkins very finely.

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix all the ingredients together well.

  2. Serve as a spread.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that carries the whole spread.
Butter
Provides the fat that gives the spread its creamy, spreadable body.
Gherkins
Add acidity and a sharp, tangy bite that cuts through the rich butter.
German mustard
Adds sharpness and helps bind the butter with the other flavourings.

The step that matters

Mix all the ingredients together well. Thorough mixing spreads the finely chopped anchovies, gherkins and herbs evenly through the butter, so each bite tastes the same and no strong salty pieces are left concentrated in one spot.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, pepper. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes