Brine That Preserves Butter' a Year

Butter kept twelve months under a salt brine strong enough to float an egg.

From: The Home Cook Book
Published: 1887
Yikes Scale: Big yikes

Exactly as printed, 1887

Mrs. D. McCraney.

To three gallons of brine, strong enough to bear an egg, add one-quarter pound good loaf sugar, and one tablespoonful of saltpetre; boil the brine, and when it is cold strain carefully. Pack butter closely in small jars, and allow the brine to cover the butter to the depth of at least four inches. This completely excludes the air. If practicable make your butter into small rolls, wrap each carefully in a clean muslin cloth, tying up with a string; place a weight over the butter to keep it all submerged in the brine. This mode is most recommended by those who have tried both.

The Home Cook Book, 1887. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

Brine only preserves what it touches. A muslin-wrapped roll of butter has an interior the salt never reaches, and butter is largely fat with enough water and protein in it to support spoilage.

The saltpetre is doing nothing useful. A tablespoon in three gallons is far too little to inhibit anything, and nitrate has no real role in preserving a fat.

Notes from the 21st century

Salt-preserving butter is real. Heavily salted butter genuinely keeps. The method that works is salting the butter itself, thoroughly, not immersing a parcel of it.
“Strong enough to bear an egg”. The period's standard brine test, landing somewhere near saturation. Egg density varies, so it is a rough guide at best.
A year is a very long claim. Even properly salted butter goes rancid on that timescale. Rancidity is oxidation, and brine does not stop it.

Also in this book

Cough Mixture — A lemonade of gum arabic and sugar candy, carrying an ounce of opium tincture.
Gardner (Cholera Remedy &c.) — Laudanum, capsicum, camphor and spirits of nitre — two to ten drops for children, every fifteen minutes.
Ginger Liqueur — Five ounces of bitter almonds, cold-steeped six days in a gallon of whiskey.

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