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Sauce

Burnt Butter

A sauce made by browning butter, adding vinegar, pepper, and salt, served with boiled skate.

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

Burnt Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir slowly until the butter turns a dark brown color.

  3. Add the hot vinegar and season with black pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled skate and garnish with crisped parsley.

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 and toasts to create a nutty, aromatic flavour that forms the sauce's base.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that cuts through the rich, browned butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter as it browns. Butter solids darken quickly once the water has cooked off, so over-browning turns the sauce bitter. Low heat and slow stirring let it colour evenly before it burns.

“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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