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Brine That Preserves Butter a Year

A method for preserving butter by submerging it in a sugar and saltpetre brine.

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 That Preserves Butter a Year

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Prepare a strong brine by adding sugar and saltpetre to 3 gallons of water.

  2. Boil the brine and let it cool, then strain it carefully.

Pack the butter

  1. Pack butter tightly into small jars and pour the brine over it, ensuring it covers the butter by at least 4 inches.

  2. If possible, shape the butter into small rolls, wrap each in clean muslin cloth, and tie with string.

  3. Place a weight over the butter to keep it submerged in 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 preserved food itself; the brine is meant to keep it from spoiling while it stays fully submerged.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the brine and inhibit spoilage microbes.
Good loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the salt in the brine.

The step that matters

Keep the butter fully submerged. Any butter exposed to air can oxidise, grow mould or spoil, because the brine only protects surfaces it covers. Weighting it and keeping the required depth of brine prevents exposed areas from going off.

“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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