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Sardellen Butter — Sardine Butter

A spread made by pounding sardines with butter, cayenne pepper, and sea salt into a smooth paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sardellen Butter — Sardine Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sardines in cold water and remove scales and bones.

Make the butter

  1. Pound the sardines in a mortar with a piece of butter, gradually adding more butter until you have ½ cup mixed in.

  2. Add cayenne pepper and salt, and work into a smooth paste.

  3. Press the paste into a jar or small potting-pans.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sardines
Provide the main savoury, oily flavour and the body of the paste.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the paste a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Working the sardines and butter into a smooth paste. Pounding the fish fully breaks it into fine fibres so it blends evenly with the butter. Leftover lumps or bones give a gritty texture, and adding butter gradually helps it emulsify into a uniform paste.

“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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