Butter

Handmade Asturian Butter with its peculiar engravings

The butter —called manteca in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay— is a more or less solid emulsion considered fit for human consumption, product of the churning, kneading and washing of milk fats and water, with or without biological maturation produced by specific lactic acid bacteria.

Production

Woman making butter. Paris, 1499.

Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in the form of microscopic globules. These globules are surrounded by membranes made of phospholipids (fatty acids that act as emulsifiers) and proteins, which prevent the milk fat from clumping into a uniform mass. Butter is produced by churning the cream from the milk, which causes damage to the membranes and allows the fats in the milk to come together into a single mass, while separating from other parts. A kilogram of butter requires more than 20 liters of milk. Due to the high demand for milk, butter is a food that causes particularly high greenhouse gas emissions in production.

Variations in its preparation mean that there are not only different flavors, but also different consistencies of the butter mass; however, most of the final product is made up of milk fats. Butter contains fats in three forms: free, crystallized, and undamaged globules. The consistency in the various varieties of butter depends on the proportion of each type: butters with more crystallized fats tend to be harder (more difficult to spread) than those with more free fats.

The process of whipping the creams from the milk produces small 'lumps' floating in the liquid solution of the cream. This solution is called buttermilk. This whey today is consumed in some countries as a dairy product. The buttermilk is removed from the process and the resulting lumps are "worked", pressing and stirring so that they form a single solid mass. When it is prepared by hand, wooden levers called Scotch hands are used. This operation gives consistency to the butter and gradually dislodges the small drops of water that are retained inside the lumps.

Commercial butter has a fat content of about 80% and a remainder of 15% water; Artisanal butter has a different ratio, reaching 65% fat and 30% water, with the fat coagulated into moderately sized globules. They are made up of triglycerides, an ester derivative of glycerol, and three groups of fatty acids. Butter starts to go rancid when the chains break down into small components, such as butyric acid and diacetyls. The density of butter is 0.911 g/cm³, about the same as that of ice.

Types

Handmade butter.

There are several types of butter, but basically two can be distinguished:

• Acid butter: after cream acidification (this is the traditional one).
• Sweet butter: before cream acidification.

In addition, you can add salt or not, obtaining salty or normal butter depending on the case. And, of course, it can be made from the milk of many animals, the most common in the West being sheep, cow or goat butter (as a curiosity, it is not possible to obtain butter from camel milk).

Composition and physical properties

Butter is rich in vitamin A. It also contains vitamin D and vitamin E. Butter has a very high energy content with more than 730 |kcal per 100 g. It contains 63% saturated fatty acids, 26% monounsaturated fatty acids and 3.7% polyunsaturated fatty acids. In addition, butter contains cholesterol, a little protein and water.

Composition of butter (in g per 100 g):

The butter melts progressively between 20 and 38 degrees Celsius, depending on the additive effect of the melting of its components, since butter is a mixture of triglycerides whose composition varies with the cow's diet.

Homemade

It's not complicated to make homemade butter. You just have to beat the Cream of milk with a spoon or with a wooden spatula, from top to bottom, until it is assembled and then continue beating. With a mixer it is even easier and faster. The final appearance is usually given with a butter mold that provides a more attractive shape for consumers.

Clarified butter, such as Indian ghee or ghee, is obtained by decanting melted butter. It keeps longer and better withstands high temperatures, which is why it is used in numerous culinary preparations.

History

Butter processing techniques still performed in the present. Photo taken in Palestine, before March 1914. National Geographic.

Handmade butter.

It is quite possible that accidental stirring of the cream in the milk gave rise to the butter; This is why butter was made and used in the first attempts at dairy processing, perhaps in the Mesopotamian area between 9,000 and 8,000 BC. The first butter may have been made from sheep's or goat's milk, which were already domesticated at that time. A very ancient method of making butter is used today in parts of Africa and the Near East.

Butter was highly appreciated by the Vikings and Celts (Northern Europe), which is why the Romans and Greeks considered it a barbaric product and did not include it in their diet, perhaps due to the short shelf life that is possible in the warm Mediterranean climate characteristic of these latitudes (unlike cheese). A Greek comic poet, Anaxandrides refers to the Thracians as boutyrophagoi, "butter-eaters", and Pliny in his Natural History calls butter "the most delicate food among the barbarian nations", and describes in his book its medicinal properties. In India, ghee, a clarified butter, known as liquid gold, is held as a symbol of purity and is also used as an offering to the gods. —especially Agni, the Hindu god of fire. In Ayurvedic discipline, ghee is a food that helps to promote purification, inner peace and the health of the body. For more than 3,000 years references to ghee appear in numerous sacred texts from the time of the Rig-veda, around 1500-1200 BC. c.

Butter elaborations in Europe from medieval times were prepared in France (Normandy and Brittany), Holland and Ireland, most of the production is handmade. Butter was considered in those days and those countries an expensive product; for this reason it was available only to the wealthier classes or those who marketed it. In southern Europe, on the other hand, olive oil or lard was preferred. Only in the countries of Muslim or Jewish religions, in the Mediterranean, did they even use cow fat to replace pork fat, for example, in the Middle Ages, and only in some sweet preparations. In Portugal, Italy and southern and eastern Spain, the consumption of lard has been decreasing, but it has been directly replaced by olive oil and not by butter.

In 1870, the appearance of margarine, the invention of the French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, made it possible to distribute a butter substitute at a lower cost among the populations. Per capita consumption of butter has declined in most Western nations during the 20th century, partly because of the popularity of margarine, which is less expensive and perceived by the population as healthier. In the United States the consumption of margarine during the 1950s was greater than that of butter and today that is the case in other nations. Even in countries like Venezuela and Colombia the name butter refers to margarine

In the Mediterranean area, olive oil is still generally preferred, a custom that is currently reinforced due to its heart-healthy and nutritional qualities compared to butter.

Butter around the world

India, which produces and consumes more butter than any other nation in the world, spends almost half of its dairy production making its butter, called ghee. In 1997 India produced 1,470. 000 metric tons of butter, consuming most of its own production. In second place was the United States (522,000 tons), followed by France (466,000), Germany (442,000), and New Zealand (307,000). In terms of consumption, Germany is second behind India, using 578,000 tons of butter in 1997, followed by France (528,000), Russia (514,000), and the United States (505,000). Most nations produce and consume what their local industry generates. New Zealand, Australia, and the Ukraine are among the nations that export a significant percentage of butter.

There are different varieties of butter throughout the world. The Smen is a clarified butter from Morocco, which can be consumed after having undergone curing processes of months or even years. Yak milk butters are very important in Tibet (they are used in a salty butter tea prized in the Himalayan, Bhutan, Nepal and India regions); tsampa, which uses barley flour mixed with yak milk butter, is considered a staple. In Africa and Asia, butter is traditionally made from sour milk rather than cream.

World production

Data on the production of butter made exclusively from cow's milk:

Main producers of Butterfly (2018) (tonnes)
United States	892.801
New ZealandNew Zealand	502,000
GermanyGermany	484.047
France	352,400
Russia Russia	257.883
Ireland	237,800
TurkeyTurkey	215.431
IranIran	183.125
PolandPoland	177.260
Mexico Mexico	153.674
United KingdomUnited Kingdom	152,000
CanadaCanada	116.144
BelarusBelarus	115.199
BrazilBrazil	109.100

Source

Storage

Distribution of butter and margarines in a supermarket.

Butter can usually be spread on bread or toast at a temperature of 15°C, above the operating temperature of the refrigerator. The so-called "butter compartment" that can be found in many refrigerators is one of the least cold areas, but it is still far from the ideal temperature for butter to spread easily once it is placed on the table, since its point of melting is above 38 °C.

When storing butter, the following should be taken into account:

• Butter is a food that by its physical and chemical characteristics has a great resistance to bacterial contamination. This is why it is possible to keep butter at room temperature for days without it being attacked by bacteria; however, the flavor is affected because the butter fats react (it is oxidized), producing rancid flavors.
• Butter is able to absorb the strong odors around it, so it is advisable to keep it in the fridge, inside hermetic containers and as far away from the possible light.
• Save the butter in your initial container or wrapper, to avoid oxidation.
• Butter parts exposed to light and air tend to have a more yellowish or even translucent tone; these areas should be avoided as their taste is rancid. In this case it is enough to remove them; the rest of the butter is edible.

Butter in the arts

• The beurre tart (The slice of bread with butter) is a musical piece for piano attributed to Mozart.
• The Cathedral of Ruan has a tower called the Tour du Beurre, the butter tower, a yellow stone tower shaped that recalls a lot of butter built between 1485 and 1506, whose construction costs were covered with the dispensations raised to the faithful of Ruan to eat butter during Lent.
• Lewis Caroll, in his novel Through the mirror and what Alicia found there (1871), continuation of 'The Adventures of Alice in WonderlandHe invented the fly in bread with butter English word game since butterfly (mariposa) is literally the butter fly (butter fly);
• L'Assiette au Beurre was a French illustrated satirical magazine published between 1901 and 1912
• In the film The last tango in Paris in 1972 is a scene between Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider where a non-food use of butter is made
• In the French film The American Night of 1973, its director François Truffaut gives the butter therapeutic virtues