Name: Brine That Preserves Butter a Year
Ingredients: 3 gallons of brine (strong enough to float an egg); ¼ pound good loaf sugar; 1 tablespoon saltpetre; butter; clean muslin cloth; string; weight

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Brine That Preserves Butter a Year

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

Boil the brine and let it cool.
Strain the brine carefully.

Pack and cover the butter

Pack butter closely in small jars.
If possible, shape the butter into small rolls and wrap each in a clean muslin cloth, tying with string.
Cover the butter with brine to a depth of at least 4 inches.
Place a weight over the butter to keep it submerged in the 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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Is the food being preserved; it is kept submerged so air and spoilage are limited.
Saltpetre: Helps preserve the meat-free butter brine and gives it a cured, stable character.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter fully submerged. Butter exposed above the brine can spoil, so it must stay under the liquid at a depth of at least 4 inches. A weight holds it down, and a clean, strained brine reduces contamination.

“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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Brine That Preserves Butter a Year