Butter makes it all better

The history of butter spans centuries. So when it was branded as bad news in the era of margarine, one couldn’t help but be a little skeptical.

When I waited tables, there was a female chef who crowed a constant refrain from behind the line as she scooped heaping spoonfuls of softened butter into sauces, soups and pasta water: “Butter makes it better.” I’ve never disagreed with her. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a wildly biased reference and one that should not be taken too seriously. I hail from a long line of proud butter eaters and butter makers, who plopped dollops of salted sweet cream butter—and when we had time and were feeling particularly indulgent, cultured butter made from hand by skimmed cream—on everything from potato skins and Saltine crackers to green beans. My grandfather was known to indulge, on the not-so-rare occasion, in a little pat of butter rolled in sugar. He’d let the sweet and salty concoction melt on his tongue with a look on his face akin to Lewis Carroll’s infamous Cheshire cat. (Don’t knock it till you try it.) My grandmother even put butter on her family’s burns, which in my opinion, and every accredited member of the medical profession, is really the only thing that it shouldn’t be used for.

Butter’s lauded history is long and as rich as its flavor. There’s reason to believe that it goes as far back as 2,000 B.C., and it showed up frequently in the lore of the Fertile Crescent. It was purported to be a good way to fend off evil, claimed to be a food fit for the Gods and it became an important player in commerce in the 11th and 12th centuries. Butter barrels are still commonly uncovered in the bogs of Ireland where they were stuffed for protection against spoiling and looters. (One can only imagine that there was a fair amount of spoilage back in those days.)

Farmers really began to perfect the product, or at least market it well, in the 19th century. It began evolving from the back yards of farm wives into creamery operations, which are the precursors to our modern dairy operations. Not to brag, but my Green Mountains were home to the largest creamery in the world at that time, which produced 25,000 pounds of butter a day. With the help of the Navy, production was refined to allow for long-distance transportation in the first part of the 20th century, and the product became a staple on the countertops and in the refrigerators (when those came around) of just about every home in America. Minnesota can lay bragging rights to the fact that Land O’Lakes evolved from a cooperative and that it was here that sweet cream butter gained ground, quickly becoming the standard in the U.S.

But it lost footing in the middle part of the 20th century, which it didn’t regain until 2005. Margarine tromped it in consumer consumption stats year after year and oils made significant progress as substitutes during the 1980s.

Given that my grandparents owned a small creamery and dairy farm, toothsome butter and other luscious dairy fats were a luxury that were in no short supply, and I developed a taste for them early on. Once the farm was winnowed down to accommodate their slowing schedule and aging bones, my grandfather became a milkman for a larger creamery and delivered his artery-clogging wares door to door around town. One could believe that this colloquial upbringing would put me at about the same age as Half Pint in the “Little House” novels but in fact, I grew up in Vermont where rural niceties lasted well into the eighties—the 1980s.

So, when the assault on saturated fats made butter public enemy No. 1, I staunchly stood by its side in protest against the “healthy” unsaturated fats. Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy a good olive oil and have nothing against vegetable oils in general, but I firmly believe that margarine is a bane on the planet. I mean, really, why would you substitute something that is manufactured from a plethora of difficult to pronounce ingredients for something that is made from just a small handful of naturally occurring items? It seems that after many decades of low-fat, nonfat, poly and transfat saturated eating that the people, once again, are with me. Well, to be fair, me and Ina Garten who seems to not only not have deserted butter, but to have taken it upon herself to create recipes that used up the surplus that could have occurred while it was so unpopular.

Yep, fats are back. “Saveur” dedicated its March issue to the topic of butter with articles proudly proclaiming butter’s reemergence. The issue is chock full of recipes as redolent with butter as the springtime is drenched in sunshine—and speaking of sunshine, Minnesota’s own golden, organic PastureLand butter made from the milk of grass-fed cows ranks right up with hundreds of the world’s best tasting butters, and let me tell you, thanks to butter’s revival there is some seriously stiff competition in this category these days.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that even though it never went away for me; I’m plain-old glad that it’s back. I’m happy to not have to sneak it into my meals when my husband’s not looking or to defend its use to dinner guests while they both bemoaned and delighted over its completely inimitable, rich and delicious mouth feel in whatever it was they were eating. In the meantime, if there’s another fatty food that needs defending, you can find me in the kitchen making pound cake.