Name: Lemon Butter
Ingredients: 3 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; dash of paprika

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Butter

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
dash of paprika

Directions

Cream the butter in a bowl until smooth.
Add the salt, lemon juice, and paprika and mix until well combined.

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.

Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter: Provides fat and a smooth, rich texture that carries the lemon flavor.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the 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.