Butter: A Rich History

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.

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.

vagaries

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.

She’ll repeatedly bring up a wad of saliva-soaked grass, called a bolus, from her rumen back into her mouth.

medicaments.”

(from the Latin butyrum for “butter”),

terroir

acrid.