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Sauce

Burnt Butter

Burnt butter is butter browned with vinegar and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Burnt Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over low heat.

  2. Stir slowly until the butter turns dark brown.

  3. Add the hot vinegar and season with black pepper and salt.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Milk solids toast as it browns, giving the sauce its nutty, toasty aroma and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts the richness of the butter and brightens the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir slowly until the butter turns dark brown. Milk solids in butter can go from brown to burnt within seconds once they darken. Low heat and slow stirring let them toast evenly, so the butter develops nutty flavour without a bitter, burnt taste.

“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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