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Brine for Butter

A brine used to preserve butter by submerging it in a salted, sugared solution.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 for Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a brine strong enough to float an egg in water.

  2. Add ½ pound of sugar and 2 tablespoons of baking soda to the brine.

  3. Strain the brine and pour it over the butter.

  4. Ensure the butter is rolled in cloth and kept submerged under 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. 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
The food being treated; it takes up flavour and moisture from the brine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and carries flavour into the butter.

The step that matters

Keep the butter fully submerged under the brine. Any part of the butter left above the liquid is not in contact with the brine, so it treats unevenly and can dry or change at the surface while the rest absorbs the brine.

“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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