Skip to main content
Main

Greek Butter

A Greek butter spread made from almonds, caviar, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and oil, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Greek Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the Jordan almonds.

  2. Pound the blanched almonds to a fine paste in a mortar that has been rubbed with garlic.

Make the butter

  1. Add the caviar, lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, and enough oil to form a stiff paste.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot slices of dry toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

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

  4. Caviar + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together104 recipes

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

  5. Caviar + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together92 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

Jordan almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty body of the paste once pounded fine.
Caviar
Supplies the salty, briny flavour that defines the butter.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich paste and cuts its richness.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture so the almonds and caviar bind into a stiff paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the almonds to a fine paste. If the almonds are left coarse, the paste stays gritty and will not bind smoothly with the oil. Pounding them fine first gives the emulsion a uniform, spreadable texture.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (caviar, lemon, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Peasfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against caviar, lemon, pepper. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesAlmond SaladAlmond Salad6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes