eat butter like cheese
don't put salted butter in your baked goods, buy European, and other rules
The world outside is covered in snow and ice, and I’m sitting bundled in two sweatshirts and wool socks on cup of Earl Grey number five, so it feels like the right time to talk about the ingredient that was made for days like these.
Butter. I’ve been subconsciously writing this piece in the back of my mind since the first week of Bite into this, when lots of friends asked if I’d started this newsletter so I could finally talk about butter without someone rolling their eyes. (Definitely yes.)
Fat — in our bodies, to be cooked with, and as a source of calories — makes so much sense on a wintry evening like this one. The cold evokes its evolutionary function as stored energy for the lean days of winter and as an extra protective layer for the coldest ones. I could write about olive oil, but that spicy green gold belongs in a time of summer and warmth, alongside tomatoes and peaches. Schmaltz and lard are more apropos for the middle of January, but they’re wonderful in a purely savory way and thus limited in their applications.
But butter — butter I’m craving right now. Butter makes your mouth water. It makes pasta silky on the tongue, adds depth to grains, and lends a tender crumb to cakes. It softens the bite of chocolate, sweetens shellfish, and builds depth and dimension in everything it touches.
Butter is a luxury. It is cream skimmed off of milk, then fat removed from cream. Just half of a pound of butter begins as at least a gallon of milk. A pat of butter slowly melting in a pan or on a piece of toast feels like a special occasion.
Butter is also ordinary. The Romans once considered it the food of barbarians; in the Middle Ages, the wealthy derided it as the fat of peasants. Most children learn to make butter at home or at school, violently shaking a jar of cream until a solid ball emerges through the liquid. (If you’re interested in the science: The shaking breaks the membrane around each globule of fat that keeps it suspended in cream; once the membranes are broken, the fat globules stick together.)
I don’t remember exactly when I stopped seeing butter as just an ingredient and instead as food in its own right, but I know that it happened with French butter on a loaf of fresh bread. I don’t know where I was or who I was with, but I remember biting into a very crusty loaf topped with a quarter inch thick slab of butter and having one of those mini food orgasms, eyes shut and moaning, like I’d never had bread and butter before.
European butter is different from American sweet cream butter in a couple of ways, the most important being that its butterfat content is slightly higher, sitting at or above 82% instead of our American 80%. This creates a significantly more luscious, melty product. (Higher fat content = tastes better). European butter is also often cultured, which means that the cream has been allowed to ferment a little, giving it a slightly nuttier and more complex flavor. (Butter in the US is called sweet cream because the cream is still perfectly sweet, untouched by bacteria). And finally, salted European butter has sometimes been salted with bigger flakes, making the salt a little more pronounced and textured.
All of these differences make European butter much better than American-style sweet cream for getting a superb flake in pie crusts, croissants, and other pastries. More importantly, they make it much more tempting to eat straight, like cheese.
Instead of a recipe, I’ve got an assignment for everyone reading this newsletter. Buy yourself one pound of really excellent salted European butter — the salted Kerrygold will do the job perfectly, but if you want to really go crazy you can get Isigny St. Mere or Plugra (actually an American brand made in the European style) at most grocery stores. Prepare to splurge — this stuff isn’t cheap. Also get some great bread, something with a thick sourdough crust or a nutty whole wheat flour. Let the butter come to room temperature, then cut into it like a wedge of cheese. Smear it over your bread like you’re applying brie to a cracker: You really want to paste it on here, building a thick layer that goes all the way to the edge of the slice.
Eat that, and then come and report back.
A few other rules for butter, to finish off today’s newsletter. If your cooking tastes off or uninspired and salt isn’t fixing it, a little butter will probably do the trick. Don’t use salted butter in your baked goods — you have no idea how much salt is in there, and extra salt can really throw off the chemistry of a recipe. Actually, don’t use salted butter in cooking at all; you’ll have better control salting yourself. And for bread and butter, always buy European.
Until next time, I highly recommend this fascinating article about pigs being kidnapped for scientific research and this Simple Cake book from Odette Williams, which has a recipe that’s bringing me back to my childhood obsession with the Starbucks lemon pound cake.
Thanks for reading! And please share if you’re enjoying.
I couldn't feel more seen by this. I've been eating butter like this for years, my partner always jokes I treat butter like cheese on my bread. Happy to hear I'm not the only one :)