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Sauce

Burnt Butter

Burnt butter is a sauce made by browning butter, then adding vinegar, pepper, and salt.

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 small frying pan.

  2. Cook until it becomes a dark brown color.

  3. Add the vinegar, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve as a sauce for boiled fish or poached eggs.

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 in the pan to develop a nutty, toasted flavour for the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the rich, browned butter.

The step that matters

Cook the butter to dark brown. Butter contains milk solids that brown as the water cooks off, producing the nutty flavour of the sauce. Pulling it too early leaves it pale and mild, while going too far turns it bitter and burnt-tasting, so watch the colour closely.

“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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