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Dairy product

Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment, and used as a fat in baking, sauce making, pan frying, and other cooking procedures. Most frequently made from cow's milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. It is made by churning milk or cream to separate the fat globules from the buttermilk. Salt has been added to butter since antiquity to help preserve it, particularly when being transported; salt may still play a preservation role but is less important today as the entire supply chain is usually refrigerated. In modern times, salt may be added for taste. Food coloring is sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter, removing the water and milk solids, produces clarified butter, or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat. Butter is a water in oil emulsion resulting from an inversion of the cream, where the milk proteins are the emulsifiers. Butter remains a firm solid when refrigerated but softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature and melts to a thin liquid consistency at The density of butter is It generally has a pale yellow color but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Its natural, unmodified color is dependent on the source animal's feed and genetics, but the commercial manufacturing process sometimes alters this with food colorings like annatto or carotene.

The word butter derives (via Germanic languages) from the Latin butyrum, which is the latinisation of the Greek βούτυρον (bouturon). This may be a compound of βοῦς (bous), "ox, cow" + τυρός (turos), "cheese", that is "cow cheese". The word turos ("cheese") is attested in Mycenaean Greek. The latinized form is found in the name butyric acid, a compound found in rancid butter and other dairy products.

Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules. These globules are surrounded by membranes made of phospholipids (fatty acid emulsifiers) and proteins, which prevent the fat in milk from pooling together into a single mass. Butter is produced by agitating cream, which damages these membranes and allows the milk fats to conjoin, separating from the other parts of the cream. Variations in the production method will create butters with different consistencies, mostly due to the butterfat composition in the finished product. Butter contains fat in three separate forms: free butterfat, butterfat crystals, and undamaged fat globules. In the finished product, different proportions of these forms result in different consistencies within the butter; butters with many crystals are harder than butters dominated by free fats. Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water based portion of the cream. This watery liquid is called buttermilk, although the buttermilk most commonly sold today is instead directly fermented skimmed milk. The buttermilk is drained off; sometimes more buttermilk is removed by rinsing the grains with water. Then the grains are "worked": pressed and kneaded together. When prepared manually, this is done using wooden boards called scotch hands. This consolidates the butter into a solid mass and breaks up embedded pockets of buttermilk or water into tiny droplets. Commercial butter is about 80% butterfat and 15% water; traditionally made butter may have as little as 65% fat and 30% water. Butterfat is a mixture of triglyceride, a triester derived from glycerol, and three of any of several fatty acid groups. Annatto is sometimes added by U. S. butter manufacturers without declaring it on the label because the U. S. allows butter to have an undisclosed flavorless and natural coloring agent (whereas all other foods in the U. S. must label coloring agents). The preservative lactic acid is sometimes added instead of salt (and as a flavor enhancer), and sometimes additional diacetyl is added to boost the buttery flavor (in the U. S., both ingredients can be listed simply as "natural flavors"). When used together in the NIZO manufacturing method, these two flavorings produce the flavor of cultured butter without actually fully fermenting.

Before modern factory butter making, cream was usually collected from several milkings and was therefore several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into butter. Butter made in this traditional way (from a fermented cream) is known as cultured butter. During fermentation, the cream naturally sours as bacteria convert milk sugars into lactic acid. The fermentation process produces additional aroma compounds, including diacetyl, which makes for a fuller flavored and more "buttery" tasting product. Butter made from fresh cream is called sweet cream butter. Production of sweet cream butter first became common in the 19th century, when the development of refrigeration and the mechanical cream separator (sweet cream butter can be made in 6 hours, whereas cultured butter can take up to 72 hours to make). Cultured butter is preferred throughout continental Europe, while sweet cream butter dominates in the United States and the United Kingdom. Chef Jansen Chan, the director of pastry operations at the International Culinary Center in Manhattan, says, "It's no secret that dairy in France and most of Europe is higher quality than most of the U. S." The combination of butter culturing, the 82% butterfat minimum (as opposed to the 80% minimum in the U. S.), and the fact that French butter is grass fed, accounts for why French pastry (and French food in general) has a reputation for being richer tasting and flakier. Cultured butter is sometimes labeled "European style" butter in the United States, although cultured butter is made and sold by some, especially Amish, dairies. Milk that is to be made into butter is usually pasteurized during production to kill pathogenic bacteria and other microbes. Butter made from raw milk is very rare and can be dangerous because it is made from unpasteurized milk. Commercial raw milk products are not legal to sell through interstate commerce in the United States and very rare in Europe. They are also cheaper to make than "sweet" cream and butter. The fat content of whey is low, so 1000 pounds of whey will typically give only three pounds of butter.

Elaine Khosrova traces the invention of butter back to Neolithic era Africa 8,000 B. C in her book. A later Sumerian tablet, dating to approximately 2,500 B. C., describes the butter making process, from the milking of cattle, while contemporary Sumerian tablets identify butter as a ritual offering. In the Mediterranean climate, unclarified butter spoils quickly, unlike cheese, so it is not a practical method of preserving the nutrients of milk. The ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to have considered butter a food fit more for the northern barbarians. A play by the Greek comic poet Anaxandrides refers to Thracians as boutyrophagoi, "butter eaters". In his Natural History, Pliny the Elder calls butter "the most delicate of food among barbarous nations" and goes on to describe its medicinal properties. Later, the physician Galen also described butter as a medicinal agent only.

In the cooler climates of northern Europe, people could store butter longer before it spoiled. Scandinavia has the oldest tradition in Europe of butter export trade, dating at least to the 12th century. After the fall of Rome and through much of the Middle Ages, butter was a common food across most of Europe—but had a low reputation, and so was consumed principally by peasants. Butter slowly became more accepted by the upper class, notably when the Roman Catholic Church allowed its consumption during Lent from the early 16th century. Bread and butter became common fare among the middle class and the English, in particular, gained a reputation for their liberal use of melted butter as a sauce with meat and vegetables. Across northern Europe, butter was sometimes packed into barrels (firkins) and buried in peat bogs, perhaps for years. Such "bog butter" would develop a strong flavor as it aged, but remain edible, in large part because of the cool, airless, antiseptic and acidic environment of a peat bog. Firkins of such buried butter are a common archaeological find in Ireland; the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology has some containing "a grayish cheese like substance, partially hardened, not much like butter, and quite free from putrefaction." The practice was most common in Ireland in the 11th–14th centuries; it ended entirely before the 19th century. Like Ireland, France became well known for its butter, particularly in Normandy and Brittany. Butter consumption in London in the mid 1840s was estimated at 15,357 tons annually. The first butter factories appeared in the United States in the early 1860s, after the successful introduction of cheese factories a decade earlier. In the late 1870s, the centrifugal cream separator was introduced, marketed most successfully by Swedish engineer Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval. In 1920, Otto Hunziker authored The Butter Industry, Prepared for Factory, School and Laboratory, a well known text in the industry that enjoyed at least three editions (1920, 1927, 1940). As part of the efforts of the American Dairy Science Association, Hunziker and others published articles regarding: causes of tallowiness (an odor defect, distinct from rancidity, a taste defect); mottles (an aesthetic issue related to uneven color); introduced salts; the impact of creamery metals and liquids; and acidity measurement. These and other ADSA publications helped standardize practices internationally. Butter consumption declined in most western nations during the 20th century, mainly because of the rising popularity of margarine, which is less expensive and, until recent years, was perceived as being healthier. In the United States, margarine consumption overtook butter during the 1950s, and it is still the case today that more margarine than butter is eaten in the U. S. and the EU.

Normal butter softens to a spreadable consistency around 15 °C (60 °F), well above refrigerator temperatures. The "butter compartment" found in many refrigerators may be one of the warmer sections inside, but it still leaves butter quite hard. Until recently, many refrigerators sold in New Zealand featured a "butter conditioner", a compartment kept warmer than the rest of the refrigerator—but still cooler than room temperature—with a small heater. Keeping butter tightly wrapped delays rancidity, which is hastened by exposure to light or air, and also helps prevent it from picking up other odors. Wrapped butter has a shelf life of several months at refrigerator temperatures. Butter can also be frozen to extend its storage life.

A 2015 study concluded that "hypercholesterolemic people should keep their consumption of butter to a minimum, whereas moderate butter intake may be considered part of the diet in the normocholesterolemic population." A meta analysis and systematic review published in 2016 found relatively small or insignificant overall associations of a dose of 14g/day of butter with mortality and CVD, and consumption was insignificantly inversely associated with incidence of diabetes. The study states that "findings do not support a need for major emphasis in dietary guidelines on either increasing or decreasing butter consumption."