41 Best Compound Butter Recipes for Bread, Meat, and Vegetables

These compound butter recipes can take your cooking to the next level. These delicious homemade condiments are simply butter combined with some other ingredients to create a whole new taste.

But you’d never guess how simple it is from the amazing flavor it gives your dishes.

All about compound butter

It’s not just like buttering an item and then adding a sprinkle of the flavor. These butters develop a unique flavor of their own. And you can put them on so many foods:

Spread them on flatbreads and then add vegetables, meat, or cheese as you like.
Put one into a baked potato for added flavor.
Melt them over pasta.
Put a pat or spoonful on steak, chicken, fish – any meat.
Melt a pat into a serving of vegetables to add some flavor.
Butter your bread with them.

One of the simplest examples will be familiar to many of you: honey butter, a simple blend of honey with butter, whipped together and served immediately.

Cranberry compound butter in bowl and on toast

Some people like to roll their butters up and refrigerate them so they become solid logs you can put on the table. This takes a little more prep time, but it makes an impressive addition to any meal.

On the other hand, with any of these recipes, you can just whip the ingredients together in a bowl and serve. And this also makes a beautiful presentation.

Compound Butter Recipes

These butters add so much to any meal. They can turn something as simple as a roll or piece of toast into a special treat. Try the savory ones on homemade pizza crust, or melted over a side dish like green beans. Get creative and enjoy!

Honey Sriracha Butter

Sweet, garlicky, and spicy from the sriracha sauce. This is delicious on any dish that can use a sweet-spicy addition. It's terrific on grilled shrimp.

You can also melt it and use it as a drawn butter for lobster or crab. And of course you can put it on bread and just eat it.

Chipotle Butter

This lightly spicy recipe combines canned chipotle peppers and lime juice to create a wonderful Mexican flavor. This one is perfect for spreading over an ear of corn or putting on steak. Or salmon cakes. Or even melted over popcorn.

Horseradish Butter

Perfect for prime rib, with horseradish sauce and dijon mustard. So simple, with just those two mildly spicy flavors. This one can also turn a simple hamburger into a gourmet treat.

It's also delicious melted over grilled vegetables.

Smoked Paprika-Garlic Butter

Delicious and mildly smoky with a hint of spice from the smoked paprika. With a nice helping of garlic. This one can definitely stand up to beef, chicken or any sort of meat. It's also great as a dip for asparagus.

Garlic Herb for Steak

You pick the herbs. Whichever way you go, it's a garden-fresh flavor that's simple and easy to love. Great for steaks or corn on the cob. It's also very nice for asparagus or green beans.

Red Wine Butter Recipe

Full-bodied flavor with rosemary, garlic, and chives. This one was literally made for steaks - every ingredient in it goes well with beef. it's also lovely melted over asparagus.

Herb Gorgonzola Butter

If you like gorgonzola cheese, you can't go wrong with this one. It's an amazing combination, with red pepper flakes to add a little spice to the herbs. It's wonderful with steak or chicken.

Truffle Butter Recipe

Intense umami flavor with lots of bold flavor from truffle puree, this one works so well with beef. It's also wonderful melted over pasta, with or without any added meat or vegetables. (If you've ever had brown butter spaghetti with mushrooms, that will give you the idea.)

Lemon Basil Garlic Butter Recipe

Inspired by the flavors of pesto, this one has a flavor that's fresh and tangy. It's terrific on grilled chicken, fish, steak, or pasta. You can also just spread it on bread and enjoy.

Coffee Butter Recipe

You've heard about marinating meat in coffee or coffee grounds? This butter gives you that sort of flavor, with ground coffee and cream. It's also very good on toast.

Chile-Lime-Tequila Butter

Excellent with Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes. The tequila is optional. This one can work with just about any meat or vegetable. It is especially good spread over an ear of corn. Add a pat or so to a skillet where you're cooking meat or vegetables, or just spread it on afterward.

Bacon Onion Butter

With these two super delicious ingredients, this recipe is ideal for burgers or steaks. It's also especially good in a baked potato.

'Everything Bagel' Butter

Poppy seeds, onion, and most of the rest of what's delicious on an "everything bagel." As you would expect, this one is perfect for regular bagels and other breads. But it's also great on chicken.

Serrano Lime Garlic Butter

This butter is spicy and citrus, and tastes great on meat or vegetables alike. The hint of garlic adds something special. Melt it over green beans for a special treat.

Caper-Tarragon

It was made for steak, but it's also great with fish and chicken. This recipe features garlic and Worcestershire sauce too. Along with the capers, this gives it a slightly tangy flavor, but the terragon adds a hint of its unique flavor - something like cinnamon, but not really.

Italian Compound Butter

With sun-dried tomatoes, basil and garlic, this brings a Mediterranean flavor to any dish. Enjoy it on warm pita bread, melted over steak, or in a baked potato.

Ancho Chili Butter

This spicy butter featuring pureed ancho chilies is great with shellfish and seafood. You can also also melt it over a serving of vegetables to add an exciting hint of spice.

Tarragon Mustard Butter Recipe

This is a strong, complex flavor that works well on chicken and lighter fish. But it can also be surprisingly good with certain types of bratwurst, kilbasa and other types of sausage.

Roasted Garlic Butter Recipe

The roasting makes all the difference in this simple butter recipe. It's good on anything roasted garlic tastes good on - steak, chicken, pasta and bread.

Ramp Butter Recipe

With lemon and optional herbs, this is a great way to preserve ramps when they're about to go out of season. This one is great for bagels and flatbreads, or for melting over veggies.

Roasted Red Pepper Butter

There's nothing quite like the taste of roasted red bell peppers, and this recipe shows them off to perfection. It's great on nearly any kind of meat and can also be melted over pasta for a delicious treat.

Black-Olive Butter

With black olives, scallions and mint, this one is almost like a tapenade turned into a butter. Great for spreading on bread before dinner. It's also great on a flatbread with assorted veggies.

Sundried Tomato Basil Finishing Butter

Bold and flavorful, with sun-dried tomato, basil and more. Great for steak and salmon, especially served over pasta.

Tomato Butter Recipe

Another simple but wonderful combination, this one has a wonderful garden fresh taste that comes from the tomatoes. It's very easy to make, and it goes well with flatbreads, steak, chicken or fish.

Bacon Blue Cheese Butter

Salty and smoky, with lots of flavor from the blue cheese. You know how good this combination is on burgers. Now you can spread it on bread, steaks, whatever you like. It's also very good on salmon and tuna.

Garlic, Cilantro and Lime

Three wonderfully fresh flavors combined. This one gives a little bit of a Mexican feel to anything you put it on. It adds something really special when you spread it on a fajita tortilla. It's also wonderful on a corn cob.

Cinnamon Brown Sugar Butter

This three ingredient recipe is a great alternative to honey butter. You can also add raisins into this one.

Strawberry Butter

Instead of being a smooth blended strawberry flavored butter, this delicious recipe uses chopped strawberries for texture. It's quick and easy to make this one in a food processor.

Gingerbread Butter

A sweet, cinnamon butter with cloves and molasses. Give any piece of bread the flavor of gingerbread with this butter. Biscuits are especially good with this wonderful flavor.

Drunken Cranberry Orange Butter

This butter has cranberries and orange, with just a hint of cognac (or brandy, or even dark rum). It's delicious over any sort of bread, but especially English muffins.

Pecan Praline Butter

Sweet and nutty with hints of vanilla and cinnamon. This butter is perfect for pancakes or waffles. It's also nice on bagels and biscuits. And baked sweet potatoes.

Texas Roadhouse Butter Recipe

Just like they make it at the restaurant, it's a sweetened cinnamon butter that's out of this world. It's made for biscuits, but you can also serve it with homemade bread. And it's perfect for baked sweet potatoes.

Whipped Cinnamon Pumpkin Butter

A little bit like the Texas Roadhouse cinnamon butter, but with pumpkin puree and more to make it special. This one is great on biscuits, bagels, and also pancakes.

Vanilla Honey Peach Butter

Taking honey butter to the next level, this recipe combines vanilla and honey with homemade peach puree. It's a great way to use up peaches toward the end of the season. It's great for breads, but it's also surprisingly good on chicken.

Raspberry Honey Butter

With frozen raspberries, so you can make it anytime of the year and not just when berries are in season. This one has a nice texture, too. If you love raspberries, this is a great one to try. It takes plain breakfast breads like toast, pancakes or waffles to a whole new level.

Cranberry Butter Recipe

This intensely cranberry flavored butter is perfect for Thanksgiving dinners, but it's also great anytime. Very good on breads, pancakes, waffles and other breakfast foods. You can also put it on roast turkey to help it stay moist.

Jam Butter

With this recipe, you can make a butter from any flavor of jam you like. It's easy to have something different on hand all the time. If you like toast with jelly, this is a great alternative. And if you're trying to cut back on sugar, this could help. Just spread this on toast or biscuits instead of spreading butter and jam separately.