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Brine That Preserves Butter a Year

A method of preserving butter in a brine of sugar and saltpetre for up to a year.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Brine That Preserves Butter a Year

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Boil the brine and let it cool.

  2. Strain the brine carefully.

Pack the butter

  1. Pack butter closely in small jars.

  2. Cover the butter with brine to a depth of at least 4 inches.

  3. If possible, shape butter into small rolls, wrap in muslin cloth, and tie with string.

  4. Place a weight over the butter to keep it submerged in the brine.

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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 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
The food being preserved, kept packed and fully covered so its surface stays out of contact with air.
Saltpetre
A curing agent that helps inhibit spoilage microbes and keeps the preserved butter stable.
Loaf sugar
Adds mild sweetness and rounds out the harshness of the salty brine.

The step that matters

Keep the butter fully submerged. Any butter left above the brine is exposed to air and can spoil or grow mould. The weight keeps every piece under the liquid, and the brine must cover it to a depth of at least 4 inches so the surface stays protected.

“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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