Name: Brine to Preserve Butter a Year
Ingredients: 3 gallons of brine (strong enough to float an egg); ¼ pound of white sugar; 1 tablespoon of saltpeter; clean white muslin cloth; string

Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brine to Preserve Butter a Year

Ingredients

3 gallons of brine (strong enough to float an egg)
¼ pound of white sugar
1 tablespoon of saltpeter
clean white muslin cloth
string

Directions

Make the brine

Add the sugar and saltpeter to the brine and boil it.
Let the brine cool, then strain it carefully.

Pack the butter

Shape the butter into rolls and wrap each in a clean muslin cloth, tying it with string.
Pack the rolls into a large jar and weigh them down.
Pour the brine over the butter until it is fully submerged.

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.

Egg + sugartop 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

Butter (in the method): The main food being preserved; the brine and wrapping protect it from spoiling.
Saltpeter: Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the butter and inhibit spoilage microbes.

The step that matters

Let the brine cool, then strain it carefully. Brine must be fully cooled before the butter touches it, since warm liquid would soften the butter and can encourage spoilage. Straining removes debris that could start decay during storage.

“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 to Preserve Butter a Year