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A Brine to Preserve Butter

A brine made of water, coarse sea salt, sugar, and saltpetre used to preserve butter rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Brine to Preserve Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter

  1. Work the butter into small rolls.

  2. Wrap each roll in a clean muslin cloth and tie with string.

Make the brine

  1. Make a brine by dissolving enough coarse sea salt in 3 gallons of water to float an egg.

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

  3. Boil the brine, then let it cool and strain it carefully.

Preserve

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

  2. Place a weight on top to keep the 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. 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 (in the method)
Is the food being preserved, so its quality and handling set the result.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out water and seasons the brine, helping inhibit spoilage-causing microbes.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the salt in the brine.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve colour and inhibit certain bacteria.

The step that matters

Keep the rolls fully submerged under the brine. Any butter exposed to air can spoil or oxidise. A weight keeps every roll covered by the brine throughout storage, which is what protects it.

“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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