Skip to main content
Sauce

Butter, Burnt

A browned butter sauce flavored with vinegar, pepper, and sea salt, served over fish or eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Butter, Burnt

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brown butter

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Cook until the butter turns dark brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Add vinegar, pepper, and salt.

  2. Serve over boiled fish or poached eggs.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns during cooking, developing nutty, toasted flavour and rich fat for the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the rich, toasted butter.

The step that matters

Cook until the butter turns dark brown. Butter's milk solids toast as the water boils off, creating nutty flavour. Removing it too early leaves a flat taste, while too long past brown tastes burnt and bitter, so watch closely over medium heat.

“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.

More brown butter recipes

Sauce 13Eggs 9Eggs in 4 See all 17 →

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes