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Tarragon Butter

A butter flavored with tarragon, lemon, and paprika, chilled before use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,137 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tarragon Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tarragon

  1. Remove the leaves from the tarragon sprigs, wash, and press dry.

  2. Chop the tarragon finely and pound it to a pulp in a mortar.

Make the butter

  1. Add the butter and mix thoroughly.

  2. Squeeze in the lemon juice and add the sweet paprika.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Chill

  1. Refrigerate to cool before use.

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. Tarragon + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Tarragon + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Tarragon
Supplies the main aroma and herbal flavour of the butter.
Butter
Provides fat for richness, carries the flavours, and firms up when chilled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the butter and balances its richness.
Sweet paprika
Adds mild sweetness and a warm colour to the butter.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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