Skip to main content
Preserve

A Brine to Preserve Butter

A method for preserving butter by immersing it in a salted sugar brine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and egg 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 butter

  1. Work the butter into small rolls and wrap each in a clean muslin cloth, tying them with string.

  2. Mix 2 quarts of common salt, 1 ounce of white sugar, and 1 ounce of saltpetre together.

  3. Work the mixture into the butter, using 1 ounce of the mixture for every pound of butter.

Make the brine

  1. Dissolve enough coarse sea salt in 3 gallons of water to float an egg.

  2. Add ½ cup of pure white sugar and 1 tablespoon of saltpetre to the brine.

  3. Boil the brine and strain it when cold.

Submerge and keep

  1. Pour the brine over the butter rolls to cover them completely.

  2. Place a weight on top to keep the butter rolls 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.

  1. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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
Forms the main body of the preserve, which the cure and brine act upon.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the butter and inhibit spoilage.
Common salt
Draws out moisture and slows microbial growth, aiding preservation.
White sugar
Adds a mild sweetness and helps balance the salt in the cure.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter fully submerged. Any butter left above the brine surface can be exposed to air and spoil, so the weight must hold every roll under the liquid.

“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

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes