Skip to main content
Dessert

Fairy Butter

A sweet butter made from hard‑boiled egg yolks, sugar, butter, almond paste, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fairy Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in a mortar with sugar, butter, and almond paste.

  2. Moisten the mixture with orange-flower water.

  3. Rub the mixture through a colander or wire sieve onto a dish.

  4. Serve with biscuits or ratafia drops.

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. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping bind the butter and sugar into a smooth, soft spread.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and a melting mouthfeel.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens its texture as it is worked together.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a fine, paste-like body to the spread.

The step that matters

Rubbing through a sieve. Pressing the mixture through a colander or wire sieve breaks up any lumps and gives the fine, smooth texture the dish depends on. Skipping or rushing this leaves the spread grainy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, almond. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes