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Method of Preserving Butter with Honey

A method for preserving butter by mixing it with honey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,327 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Method of Preserving Butter with Honey

Ingredients

Directions

Clarify the butter

  1. Clean the butter from the milk.

  2. Melt the butter in a stove or water bath until just before boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and let it settle without stirring.

  4. Once slightly stiff, skim off the froth and remove the dregs.

Add the honey

  1. Mix the butter with honey in a ratio of 1 ounce of honey for each pound of butter.

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. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 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

Butter
Supplies the fat that carries the flavor; clarifying removes milk solids and water from it.
Honey
Adds sweetness and a floral aroma while blending into the warm fat.

The step that matters

Let the butter settle without stirring. Milk solids and water sink while the pure butterfat rises. Stirring mixes them back in, leaving the finished butter cloudy and more likely to spoil.

“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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