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Dessert

Butter Kept Sweet

Butter kept sweet is butter preserved in a sugar‑laden brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Butter Kept Sweet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Wash all the milk out of the fresh butter and salt it.

  2. Mix the sugar evenly into the butter.

  3. Pack the butter into stone crocks.

Brine and store

  1. Prepare a brine strong enough to float an egg and strain it.

  2. Pour the brine two inches deep over the butter.

  3. Cover the crock tightly.

Serve

  1. When ready to use, cut out the butter without removing 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.

  1. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh butter
Provides the fat, body and rich flavor that the whole recipe is built on.
White granulated sugar
Adds sweetness to the butter.

The step that matters

Prepare a brine strong enough to float an egg. The brine's salt concentration must be high enough to keep the butter covered and help preserve it. A weak brine lets the butter spoil sooner, so test the strength with an egg before pouring.

“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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