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Clarified Butter

Clarified butter made by boiling butter, skimming foam, and adding onion and apples for flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,706 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Clarified Butter

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the butter in an earthenware vessel.

  2. Skim the foam that forms on top.

  3. Once foaming ceases, set the vessel aside to cool.

  4. For flavor, add one onion and two apples to the 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 + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + appletop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Its milk solids and water are separated out by boiling, leaving pure golden fat.
Onion
Adds a savory aroma to the butter as it steeps.
Apples
Add a light fruity aroma and subtle sweetness to the butter.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam. Foam is mostly milk solids and water. Removing it as it forms keeps the clarified butter clear and stops it from tasting scorched or milky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, apple. 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.

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