 Butter is a sweet dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying. Butter consists of butterfat, water and milk proteins.
Most usually made from cows' milk, butter can also be manufactured from that of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings and preservatives are sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter produces clarified butter or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat. Butter remains a solid when refrigerated, but softens to a
spreadable consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin liquid consistency at 32–35 °C (90–95 °F).
The density of butter is 911 kg/m3 (1535.5 lb/yd3). It generally has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Its color is dependent on the animal's feed and is commonly manipulated with food colorings in the commercial manufacturing process, most commonly annatto or carotene.
Etymology
The word butter derives (via Germanic languages) from the Latin butyrum, which is borrowed from the Greek boutyron. This may have been a construction meaning "cow-cheese" (bous "ox, cow" + tyros "cheese"), or the word may have been borrowed from another language, possibly Scythian. The root word persists in the name butyric acid, a compound found in rancid butter and dairy products such as Parmesan cheese.
In general use, the term "butter" refers to the spread dairy product when unqualified by other descriptors. The word commonly is used to describe puréed vegetable or nut products such as peanut butter and almond butter. It is often applied to spread fruit products such as apple butter. Fats such as cocoa butter and shea butter that remain solid at room temperature are also known as "butters". In addition to the act of applying butter being called "to butter", non-dairy items that have a dairy butter consistency may use "butter' to call that consistency to mind, including food items such as maple butter and witch's butter and non-food items such as baby bottom butter, hyena butter, and rock butter.
Types
Before modern factory butter making, cream was usually collected from several milkings and was therefore several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into butter. Butter made from a fermented cream is known as cultured butter. During fermentation, the cream naturally sours as bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The fermentation process produces additional aroma compounds, including diacetyl, which makes for a fuller-flavored and more "buttery" tasting product. Today, cultured butter is usually made from pasteurized cream whose fermentation is produced by the introduction of Lactococcus and Leuconostoc bacteria.
Another method for producing cultured butter, developed in the early 1970s, is to produce butter from fresh cream and then incorporate bacterial cultures and lactic acid. Using this method, the cultured butter flavor grows as the butter is aged in cold storage. For manufacturers, this method is more efficient since aging the cream used to make butter takes significantly more space than simply storing the finished butter product. A method to make an artificial simulation of cultured butter is to add lactic acid and flavor compounds directly to the fresh-cream butter; while this more efficient process is claimed to simulate the taste of cultured butter, the product produced is not cultured but is instead flavored.
Dairy products are often pasteurized during production to kill pathogenic bacteria and other microbes. Butter made from pasteurized fresh cream is called sweet cream butter. Production of sweet cream butter first became common in the 19th century, with the development of refrigeration and the mechanical cream separator. Butter made from fresh or cultured un-pasteurized cream is called raw cream butter. Raw cream butter has a "cleaner" cream flavor, without the cooked-milk notes that pasteurization introduces.
Throughout Continental Europe, cultured butter is preferred, while sweet cream butter dominates in the United States and the United Kingdom. Therefore, cultured butter is sometimes labeled European-style butter in the United States. Commercial raw cream butter is virtually unheard-of in the United States. Raw cream butter is generally only found made at home by consumers who have purchased raw whole milk directly from dairy farmers, skimmed the cream themselves, and made butter with it. It is rare in Europe as well.
Several spreadable butters have been developed; these remain softer at colder temperatures and are therefore easier to use directly out of refrigeration. Some modify the makeup of the butter's fat through chemical manipulation of the finished product, some through manipulation of the cattle's feed, and some by incorporating vegetable oils into the butter. Whipped butter, another product designed to be more spreadable, is aerated via the incorporation of nitrogen gas—normal air is not used, because doing so would encourage oxidation and rancidity.
All categories of butter are sold either in salted and unsalted forms. Either granular salt or a strong brine are added to salted butter during processing. In addition to enhanced flavor, the addition of salt acts as a preservative.
The amount of butterfat in the finished product is a vital aspect of production. In the United States, products sold as "butter" are required to contain a minimum of 80% butterfat; in practice most American butters contain only slightly more than that, averaging around 81% butterfat. European butters generally have a higher ratio, which may extend up to 85%.
Clarified butter is butter with almost all of its water and milk solids removed, leaving almost-pure butterfat. Clarified butter is made by heating butter to its melting point and then allowing it to cool off; after settling, the remaining components separate by density. At the top, whey proteins form a skin which is removed, and the resulting butterfat is then poured off from the mixture of water and casein proteins that settle to the bottom.
Ghee is clarified butter which is brought to higher temperatures of around 120 °C (250 °F) once the water has cooked off, allowing the milk solids to brown. This process flavors the ghee, and also produces antioxidants which help protect it longer from rancidity. Because of this, ghee can keep for six to eight months under normal conditions.
Shape of butter sticks
In the United States, butter sticks are usually produced and sold in 4-ounce sticks, wrapped in wax paper and sold four to a carton. This practice is believed to have originated in 1907 when Swift and Company began packaging butter in this manner for mass distribution.
Due to historical variances in butter printers, these sticks are commonly produced in two differing shapes:- The dominant shape east of the Rocky Mountains is the Elgin, or Eastern-pack shape. This shape was originally developed by the Elgin Butter Tub Company, founded in 1882 in Elgin, Illinois, and Rock Falls, Illinois. The sticks are 4¾ inches long and 1¼ inches (121 mm × 32 mm) wide, and are usually sold in somewhat cubical boxes stacked two by two. Among the early butter printers to use this shape was the Elgin Butter Cutter.
- West of the Rocky Mountains, butter printers standardized on a different shape that is now referred to as the Western-pack shape. These butter sticks are 3¼ inches long and 1½ inches wide (80 mm × 38 mm) and are typically sold packed side-by-side in a rectangular container.
Both sticks contain the same amount of butter, although most butter dishes are designed for Elgin-style butter sticks.
The stick's wrapper is usually marked off as eight tablespoons (120 ml/4.2 imp fl oz/4.1 US fl oz); the actual volume of one stick is approximately nine tablespoons (130 ml/4.6 imp fl oz/4.4 US fl oz).
Worldwide
India produces and consumes more butter than any other nation, and allocates almost half of its annual milk pool to butter production. In 1997, India produced 1,470,000 metric tons (1,620,000 short tons) of butter, most of which was consumed domestically. Second in production was the United States (522,000 MT/575,000 short tons), followed by France (466,000 MT/514,000 short tons), Germany (442,000 MT/487,000 short tons), and New Zealand (307,000 MT/338,000 short tons). In terms of consumption, Germany was second after India, using 578,000 metric tons (637,000 short tons) of butter in 1997, followed by France (528,000 MT/582,000 short tons), Russia (514,000 MT/567,000 short tons), and the United States (505,000 MT/557,000 short tons). New Zealand, Australia, and the Ukraine are among the few nations that export a significant percentage of the butter they produce.
Different varieties are found around the world. Smen is a spiced Moroccan clarified butter, buried in the ground and aged for months or years. Yak butter is important in Tibet; tsampa, barley flour mixed with yak butter, is a staple food. Butter tea is consumed in the Himalayan regions of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and India. It consists of tea served with intensely flavored — or "rancid"—yak butter and salt. In African and Asian developing nations, butter is traditionally made from sour milk rather than cream. It can take several hours of churning to produce workable butter grains from fermented milk.
Storage and cooking
Normal butter softens to a spreadable consistency around 15 °C (60 °F), well above refrigerator temperatures. The "butter compartment" found in many refrigerators may be one of the warmer sections inside, but it still leaves butter quite hard. Until recently, many refrigerators sold in New Zealand featured a "butter conditioner", a compartment kept warmer than the rest of the refrigerator—but still cooler than room temperature—with a small heater. Keeping butter tightly wrapped delays rancidity, which is hastened by exposure to light or air, and also helps prevent it from picking up other odors. Wrapped butter has a shelf life of several months at refrigerator temperatures.
"French butter dishes" or "Acadian butter dishes" involve a lid with a long interior lip, which sits in a container holding a small amount of water. Usually the dish holds just enough water to submerge the interior lip when the dish is closed. Butter is packed into the lid. The water acts as a seal to keep the butter fresh, and also keeps the butter from overheating in hot temperatures. This allows butter to be safely stored on the countertop for several days without spoilage.
Once butter is softened, spices, herbs, or other flavoring agents can be mixed into it, producing what is called a compound butter or composite butter (sometimes also called composed butter). Compound butters can be used as spreads, or cooled, sliced, and placed onto hot food to melt into a sauce. Sweetened compound butters can be served with desserts; such hard sauces are often flavored with spirits.
Melted butter plays an important role in the preparation of sauces, most obviously in French cuisine. Beurre noisette (hazel butter) and Beurre noir (black butter) are sauces of melted butter cooked until the milk solids and sugars have turned golden or dark brown; they are often finished with an addition of vinegar or lemon juice. Hollandaise and béarnaise sauces are emulsions of egg yolk and melted butter; they are in essence mayonnaises made with butter instead of oil. Hollandaise and béarnaise sauces are stabilized with the powerful emulsifiers in the egg yolks, but butter itself contains enough emulsifiers—mostly remnants of the fat globule membranes—to form a stable emulsion on its own. Beurre blanc (white butter) is made by whisking butter into reduced vinegar or wine, forming an emulsion with the texture of thick cream. Beurre monté (prepared butter) is melted but still emulsified butter; it lends its name to the practice of "mounting" a sauce with butter: whisking cold butter into any water-based sauce at the end of cooking, giving the sauce a thicker body and a glossy shine—as well as a buttery taste.
In Poland, the butter lamb (Baranek wielkanocny) is a traditional addition to the Easter Meal for many Polish Catholics. Butter is shaped into a lamb either by hand or in a lamb-shaped mould.
Butter is used for sautéing and frying, although its milk solids brown and burn above 150 °C (250 °F)—a rather low temperature for most applications. The smoke point of butterfat is around 200 °C (400 °F), so clarified butter or ghee is better suited to frying. Ghee has always been a common frying medium in India, where many avoid other animal fats for cultural or religious reasons.
Butter fills several roles in baking, where it is used in a similar manner as other solid fats like lard, suet, or shortening, but has a flavor that may better complement sweet baked goods. Many cookie doughs and some cake batters are leavened, at least in part, by creaming butter and sugar together, which introduces air bubbles into the butter. The tiny bubbles locked within the butter expand in the heat of baking and aerate the cookie or cake. Some cookies like shortbread may have no other source of moisture but the water in the butter. Pastries like pie dough incorporate pieces of solid fat into the dough, which become flat layers of fat when the dough is rolled out. During baking, the fat melts away, leaving a flaky texture. Butter, because of its flavor, is a common choice for the fat in such a dough, but it can be more difficult to work with than shortening because of its low melting point. Pastry makers often chill all their ingredients and utensils while working with a butter dough.
Butter also has many non-culinary, traditional uses which are specific to certain cultures. For instance, in North America, applying butter to the handle of a door is a common prank on April Fools' Day.
Health and nutrition
According to USDA figures, one tablespoon of butter (14 grams/0.5 ounces) contains 420 kilojoules (100 kcal), all from fat, 11 grams (0.4 oz) of fat, of which 7 grams (0.25 oz) are saturated fat, and 30 milligrams (0.46 gr) of cholesterol. In other words, butter consists mostly of saturated fat and is a significant source of dietary cholesterol. For these reasons, butter has been generally considered to be a contributor to health problems, especially heart disease. For many years, vegetable margarine was recommended as a substitute, since it is an unsaturated fat and contains little or no cholesterol. In recent decades, though, it has become accepted that the trans fats contained in partially hydrogenated oils used in typical margarines significantly raise undesirable LDL cholesterol levels as well. Trans-fat free margarines have since been developed.
Butter contains only traces of lactose, so moderate consumption of butter is not a problem for the lactose intolerant. People with milk allergies need to avoid butter, which contains enough of the allergy-causing proteins to cause reactions.
Butter can form a useful role in dieting by providing satiety. A small amount added to low fat foods such as vegetables may stave off feelings of hunger.
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