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Preserve

To Preserve Butter

A method of preserving butter using salt, sugar, and saltpetre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

  1. Mix the coarse sea salt, loaf sugar, and saltpetre together well.

Work the butter

  1. Add 1 pound of this mixture to 14 pounds of butter and work it in thoroughly.

  2. Once the butter is cold and firm, transfer it to glazed earthen vessels that hold 14 pounds each.

Preserve for winter

  1. To preserve for winter, add an additional ounce of the mixture for every pound of butter and cover the top with enough salt to create a brine.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 seasons the butter while slowing spoilage.
Loaf sugar
Adds a mild sweetness that balances the salt in the finished butter.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the butter and keep its colour.
Butter
Provides the fat that the cure is worked into and that gets preserved.

The step that matters

Working the cure into the butter. Salt and saltpetre must be mixed evenly through the butter. Uneven working leaves pockets of concentrated salt and under-preserved areas that can spoil sooner.

“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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