Name: Brine That Preserves Butter a Year
Ingredients: 3 gallons of water; ¼ pound good loaf sugar; 1 tablespoon saltpetre; 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 ↓

Brine That Preserves Butter a Year

Ingredients

3 gallons of water
¼ pound good loaf sugar
1 tablespoon saltpetre
butter

Directions

Make the brine

Prepare a brine by mixing 3 gallons of water with enough salt to float an egg.
Add ¼ pound of sugar and 1 tablespoon of saltpetre to the brine.
Boil the brine, then let it cool and strain it carefully.

Pack and preserve

Pack the butter tightly into small jars and pour the brine over it, ensuring it covers the butter by at least 4 inches.
If possible, shape the butter into small rolls, wrap each in clean muslin cloth, and tie with string.
Place a weight on the butter to keep it submerged in the brine.

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: Is the food being preserved, so it must stay fully submerged and tightly packed.
Saltpetre: Helps preserve the butter and keeps its colour during curing.
Good loaf sugar: Adds mild sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.

The step that matters

Keep the butter fully submerged. Any butter exposed above the brine can spoil or grow mould, because air and surface contact let microbes multiply. Pressing the butter down with a weight and covering it by at least 4 inches keeps every part protected.

“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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Brine That Preserves Butter a Year