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To Preserve Butter for Winter

This recipe preserves butter for winter by mixing salt, sugar, and saltpetre, then curing the butter.

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 ↓

To Preserve Butter for Winter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Mix the coarse sea salt, granulated sugar, and saltpetre together thoroughly.

  2. Take 16 ounces of butter and ensure it is completely cleansed from milk.

Salt and pot the butter

  1. Add 1 ounce of the salt mixture to the butter and work it in well.

  2. Transfer the mixture into pots when it is firm and cold.

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 fat being preserved; its moisture and milk solids determine how well it keeps.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and slows microbial growth, which helps the butter keep.
Granulated sugar
Adds mild sweetness and binds water, supporting the preserving effect of the salt.
Saltpetre
A curing agent that helps inhibit spoilage bacteria during storage.

The step that matters

Cleansing the butter of milk. Residual milk solids and water spoil more readily than pure butterfat. Removing them as fully as possible helps the salted butter keep through winter.

“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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