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Hazel-nut Butter

Hazelnut butter made by roasting hazelnuts, crushing them, adding water, and mixing with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Hazelnut and butter work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 559 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Hazel-nut Butter

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Roast and crush

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the hazelnuts in the oven for a moment to lightly grill their skins.

  3. Remove the hazelnuts from the oven and crush them in a mortar until they form a paste.

  4. Add a few drops of cold water to prevent the nuts from producing oil.

Finish the butter

  1. Mix in an equal weight of butter and rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

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. Hazelnut + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together559 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Hazelnuts
Provide the nutty flavour and natural oil that binds the crushed nuts into a paste.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and helps the paste spread easily.

The step that matters

Adding cold water while crushing. Crushing nuts creates friction that warms them, and warm nuts release their oil and separate. A few drops of cold water help keep the paste from turning oily and keep it smooth.

“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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