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
Work the butter into small rolls.
Wrap each roll in a clean muslin cloth and tie with string.
Make the brine
Make a brine with 3 gallons of water and enough coarse sea salt to float an egg.
Add ½ cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of saltpetre to the brine.
Boil the brine.
Let the brine cool and strain it carefully.
Cure
Pour the brine over the butter rolls to cover them completely.
Place a weight over the rolls to keep them submerged.
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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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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)
- Forms the main body of the rolls that the brine acts on.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the brine and draws moisture from the butter, firming and flavouring it.
- Pure white sugar
- Adds a mild sweetness that balances the salt in the brine.
- Saltpetre
- Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the butter and affects its colour and flavour.
The step that matters
Keep the rolls fully submerged under the brine. Any part of the butter left above the liquid can spoil or pick up off-flavours, so the weight must hold every roll completely under the brine for the whole curing period.
“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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