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 ↓
Cress Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cress
Wash the cress and pick off the leaves.
Press the leaves dry and chop them finely.
Make the butter
In a mixing bowl, work the butter with your hand until it becomes waxy.
Add the chopped cress, lemon juice, and sweet paprika; mix thoroughly.
Shape and chill
Slide a star tube into an ornamenting sack and fill it with the butter.
Gather the top of the sack and set it aside.
Arrange large green cress leaves in clusters of three on a sheet of wax paper.
Force the butter out through the tube in small stars or rosettes onto the center of the leaves.
Put in the icebox until cold and use to garnish fish entrees.
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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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 richness and a firm, waxy body that holds the shape of the stars or rosettes.
- Cress
- Adds fresh, peppery flavor and green color throughout the butter.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the butter and cuts its richness.
The step that matters
Press the leaves dry and chop them finely. Wet cress leaves add water to the butter, which can make it soft and weep, and coarse pieces will clog the star tube and spoil the piped shape.
“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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