Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
To Makk Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the equipment and milk
Scald your pails and pans frequently.
Expose them to the sun to keep them sweet.
Let the milk stand for about 10 minutes to settle.
Strain the milk into the pans.
Warm the pans with hot water in winter.
Cool them with cold water in summer.
Keep milk in a cool, airy place in summer.
Keep milk in a warm place in winter.
Skim and churn
Skim the milk as soon as it thickens in warm weather.
In colder weather, skim when there is a good thick cream.
Churn the cream as often as you have enough.
Ideally churn every third day.
If the cream is at the right temperature, it will not froth.
If it does froth, add a little salt.
Work out all the buttermilk with a ladle in summer.
In winter, use clean hands.
Pickle and store
Layer the butter in a jar or firkin, leaving space for pickle over it.
Prepare the pickle with ½ pail of water, 1 quart fine salt, 2 ounces loaf sugar, and 1 ounce saltpetre, boiled and skimmed.
Once cooled, cover the butter with the pickle to keep it good and sweet for a year.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the cream that is skimmed off and churned into butter.
- Fine salt
- Seasons the pickle and helps preserve the butter in brine.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds a little sweetness to the pickle brine.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the pickle brine and keep the butter sweet.
The step that matters
Churning at the right temperature. If the cream is too cold or too warm it can froth rather than form butter, and the fat separates poorly. Keeping the cream at a suitable temperature lets the fat globules clump together into butter.
“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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