Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Vermont Butter
Ingredients
Directions
Make the butter
Let the milk stand for 30 hours in warm weather or 48 hours in cold weather to separate the cream.
Churn the cream in a wooden hand churn, using cold water and draining off the buttermilk until it is completely gone.
Pack and salt
Pack the butter tightly into firkins.
Cover the surface with a thin white cloth.
Sprinkle coarse salt on top.
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.
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Butter
- Forms the bulk of the dish, providing richness and a creamy texture.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the butter and helps preserve it.
- Finely powdered loaf sugar
- Adds gentle sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the butter.
The step that matters
Draining off the buttermilk completely. Buttermilk left in the butter contains milk solids and water that can spoil or make the butter sour and less stable, so it must be worked out thoroughly during churning.
“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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