Name: A Brine to Preserve Butter
Ingredients: 3 gallons water; coarse sea salt (enough to float an egg); ½ cup pure white sugar; 1 tablespoon saltpetre; 2 quarts common salt; 1 ounce white sugar; 1 ounce saltpetre; butter (amount as needed)

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A Brine to Preserve Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

Make a brine by dissolving enough coarse sea salt in 3 gallons of water to float an egg.
Add ½ cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of saltpetre to the brine, then boil and strain it once cooled.

Prepare the butter

Work the butter into small rolls and wrap each in a clean muslin cloth, tying them with string.
For preserving butter, mix 2 quarts of common salt, 1 ounce of white sugar, and 1 ounce of saltpetre until pulverized.
Work this mixture into the butter, using 1 ounce for every pound of butter, then form into half-pound rolls.

Brine and weight

Pour the brine over the butter rolls to cover them completely, then place a weight on top to keep them submerged.

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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Is the food being preserved, so its moisture and fat are what the cure works on.
Common salt: Draws water out of the butter and inhibits microbial growth, helping it keep.
Saltpetre: Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the butter and hold its colour.
White sugar: Adds a little sweetness and helps balance the harshness of the salt.

The step that matters

Submerging the butter rolls fully in the brine. Any part of the butter left above the brine is exposed to air and can spoil, so the rolls must stay completely covered by the weight.

“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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A Brine to Preserve Butter