HISTORY OF BUTTER From the ancient Fertile Crescent to the present day, butter has symbolized the powerful, life giving and sacred, the good, the happy, the healthy and pure. Butter is a culinary treasure as old as King Tut’s tomb. "She brought forth butter in a lordly dish“ Pure butter is produced today made of milk from cows instead of camels or water buffaloes. Its use as early as 2,000 years before Christ. The word butter comes from bou-tyron, which seems to mean "cowcheese" in Greek.

CONTINUE… The word was borrowed from the language of the northern and butterophagous Scythians, who herded cattle. Greeks lived mostly from sheep and goats whose milk, which they consumed mainly as cheese, was relatively low in butter (or butyric) fat. The earliest details of method of manufacture are derived from the Arabs and Syrians, was to use vessel made from goatskin for a churn. The animal was skinned, the skin sewed up tight, leaving an opening only at the left foreleg, where the cream was poured in. The "churn" was then suspended from the tent poles and swung until the "butter comes.“

CONTINUE… In the first centuries butter was shipped from India to ports of the Red Sea. In the 12th century, Scandinavian butter was an article of oversee commerce. The Germans sent ships to Bergen, in Norway, and exchanged their cargoes of wine for butter and dried fish. The Norsemen, the Finns, the Icelanders, and the Scots had done the same flavored butter heavily with garlic, knuckled it into a wooden firkin, and buried it for years in the bogs for so long that people were known to plant trees to mark the butter's burial site. The longer it was left, the more delicious it became.

FirkinButter Stamps and Molds

CONTINUE…. In 3500 BC, the people of Sumer shook cream in a vertical churn. And butter was important enough to write about records have been carved in stone. In the frieze below, to the right of the farm shed, temple staff milk a cow, and to the left they strain and stores the milk and make butter. According to ancient references, butter was used not only in cooking, but in medicine, cosmetics and even sacrificial worship rituals. From the 14th century onward in Europe, popes and people who liked butter on fast days had to buy special dispensations from the church.

BUTTER MAKING

HISTORY OF BUTTERMILK In days gone by, nothing went to waste in the standard homestead, and this included the liquid leftover after churning butter. Combined with natural airborne bacteria, this liquid thickened and soured, taking on a pleasingly tangy flavor. The resulting buttermilk made an excellent addition to biscuits, pancakes, and baked goods. Buttermilk is an essential ingredient in Southern biscuits, pies and cornbread. It also makes a great low-fat base for creamy soups, salad dressings and marinades.

CHURN BUTTERMILK The fat is removed by churning cream into butter. Not high in fat. The watery end-product of butter making but it has been replaced as a beverage by cultured butter milk. Before World War II much of the butter produced in the United States was made from gathered cream. Farmers separated milk on the farm an shipped cans of cream to a butter factory.

CONTINUE… The cream was often sour and needed to be neutralized before churning. After whole milk was shipped to the creamery, providing a supply of “sweet cream” for butter. With these improvements came the advent of higher-quality butter and the demise of naturally soured buttermilk.

Dash Butter ChurnMetal Dazy Churn

CULTURED BUTTERMILK Made from low-fat or skim milk and has less than 2% fat and sometimes none. Prepared from skim or low-fat milk by fermentation with bacteria that produces lactic acid. The resulting product is thicker than traditional butter milk. The high numbers of live bacteria organisms are also thought to provide other healthful and digestive benefits.

CONTINUE…. Cultured buttermilk consists: - 90% water - 5% sugar lactose - 3% protein casein