Butter: A Rich History

Freshly made butter, for instance, was essential for celebrating Imbolc (pronounced “EEM-olk”), the spring Druid festival that paid homage to the holy day of Brigid, the pagan goddess of fire, healing, and fertility.

Now with better lipoprotein science at hand, researchers are gradually dismantling the simplistic (if not erroneous) assumption that saturated fat is categorically bad and rebuilding a much more nuanced and individualized understanding of what causes heart disease. In the process, butter is getting a long overdue pardon.

(from the Latin butyrum for “butter”),

acrid.

organoleptic benefits

Smooth-textured butter is the result of manipulating the structure and ratio of fat molecules in cream, which are either hard and crystalline or soft and fluid. By warming and cooling the cream—a process known as physical ripening or tempering—the consistency of its fats can be remodeled to create a more spreadable butter.

vagaries

A ewe, for example, will give milk with twice the fat content of cow’s milk; goat’s milk has fat molecules that are smaller and more digestible, but it lacks carotene so goat butter is white; milk from a yak has less milk sugar (lactose) and more protein than cow’s milk; camel’s milk is similar to goat’s milk in composition, but it can have up to t

medicaments.”