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 ↓
To Preserve Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the cure
Mix the coarse sea salt, saltpetre, and sifted sugar together well.
Add 1 ounce of this mixture for every pound of butter.
Store
Place the butter in a pan or tub and cover it tightly.
Store in a cool, dry place for three weeks.
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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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws out moisture and inhibits microbial growth, helping preserve the butter.
- Saltpetre
- Acts as a curing agent that helps inhibit spoilage bacteria during storage.
- Sifted sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the salt in the cure.
The step that matters
Covering the butter tightly. An airtight cover limits exposure to air and contaminants, which matters because the cure alone does not guarantee the butter stays safe over three weeks of storage.
“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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