Name: Colbert Butter
Ingredients: 1 pound Maitre d'Hotel butter; 6 tablespoons dissolved pale meat glaze; 1 teaspoon chopped tarragon

Why it works: Butter and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Colbert Butter

Ingredients

1 pound Maitre d'Hotel butter
6 tablespoons dissolved pale meat glaze
1 teaspoon chopped tarragon

Directions

Make the butter

Combine 1 pound of Maitre d'Hotel butter with 6 tablespoons of dissolved pale meat glaze in a bowl.
Add 1 teaspoon of chopped tarragon and mix well.

Serve

Serve with fish prepared à la Colbert.

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 + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + tarragontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,572 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Meat + tarragontop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together184 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Maitre d'hotel butter: Provides the fat base and the main flavour of the butter.
Pale meat glaze: Adds savoury depth and body to the butter when dissolved into it.
Tarragon: Adds a fresh, aromatic herbal flavour to the butter.