Many believe that ancient nomadic people first discovered the miracle of butter. It is thought that while traveling long distances, nomads would attach sacks containing milk to their pack animals and the cream was eventually churned into butter.
Khosrova traces butter's beginning back to ancient Africa, in 8000 B.C., when a herder making a journey with a sheepskin container of milk strapped to the back of one of his sheep found that the warm sheep's milk, jostled in travel, had curdled into something remarkably tasty.
Butter is manufactured from dairy cream using a churning process. The cream is produced by passing milk through a separator, which divides the incoming milk into skim milk (0.1% milkfat) and cream (35-40% milkfat). Cream is churned until small butter grains form in buttermilk.
Butter is as old as Western civilization. In ancient Rome, it was medicinal--swallowed for coughs or spread on aching joints. In India, Hindus have been offering Lord Krishna tins full of ghee —luscious, clarified butter —for at least 3,000 years.
Butter is produced by churning cream until the fats separate from the liquid (buttermilk) and the butter is in a semi-solid state. (See our recipe for making butter yourself.) It is believed that the Nomads first discovered butter-making by mistake.
As you agitate the fat in the milk cream, the fat membranes break open, and the sticky fat will start to clump together into a ball of butter. The milk left behind is called buttermilk (but this buttermilk is a skim milk rather than the cultured buttermilk that you would find in the grocery store).
What are the ingredients of butter? Butter is a masterpiece of simplicity, and a celebration of classic, traditional dairy. In its purest state, butter is just cream from milk that has been churned.
To do so was considered barbaric, with Pliny the Elder going so far as to call butter “the choicest food among barbarian tribes.” In addition to a general disdain for drinking too much milk, Romans took issue with butter specifically because they used it for treating burns and thus thought of it as a medicinal salve, ...
It is thought that while traveling long distances, nomads would attach sacks containing milk to their pack animals and the cream was eventually churned into butter. A Sumerian tablet from ancient Mesopotamia that dates back to 2,500 BCE illustrates rudimentary dairy production.
Milk originated as a glandular skin secretion in synapsids (the lineage ancestral to mammals), perhaps as early as the Pennsylvanian period, that is, approximately 310 million years ago (mya).
Along with 80% butterfat, the average butter sold in the United States contains about 16-18% water and 2-4% additional components, such as milk solids and sometimes salt.
Butter is created by separating the milk fat from the milk liquid, primarily through physical agitation and/or churning, and then the sticky milk fat globules are pressed together into a uniform block.
A: Yes, butter is considered a dairy product. That's because it is made by churning dairy cream, which again comes from milk. Cream, with 35-40% milk fat, is churned and kneaded, removing the liquid buttermilk completely to make butter.
Milk's Humble Beginnings
Dairy got its start in what is now Turkey in about 8,000 BCE, and for reasons of food safety in the days before refrigeration, the first milk from animals was turned into yogurt, cheese, and butter. Then Mother Nature stepped in and changed everything.
The First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788 with basic food supplies, including flour, sugar, butter, rice, pork and beef, expecting to grow food when they arrived.
First mentions about butter. The earliest evidence of butter dates back to 2000 years B.C. Archaeologists have found a limestone tablet that is around 4500 years old. It illustrates how our ancestors were making butter. However, some historians suppose that this spread was discovered way earlier.
Butter has a natural pale-yellow color but can range from deep yellow to white depending on feed used and the breed of cow the milk originates from.
Unauthorized use is prohibited. Butter, traditionally, is yellow, a color ideally derived from plant carotene in the milk of grass-fed cows. Margarine, on the other hand, as made in the industrial vat, is white, the unappetizing shade of grade-school paste.
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.
In Greece, butter was a luxury item plus it is an animal product and since Greeks fasted from animal products for over 180 days a year, butter was not a regular part of their diet. However, during holidays Greek cuisine has plenty of desserts that use butter and not just any butter, they used butter from sheep's milk.
Raw butter consumption in Italy is practically nil, while in cooking (where all in all butter does not express its best, due to its low smoke point, which is between 120 and 130°C just barely) it is olive oil that reigns supreme, and not only in the Central and Southern Regions.
In Rome, due to the inevitability of spoilage, and because fresh milk was available only on farms, it was consumed mostly by the farmers' children and by peasants who lived nearby, often with salted or sweetened bread. This led to fresh milk's being widely regarded as a food of low status.
To make butter from cream, the cream is shaken so that the fat particles get shaken out of position and clump together with other fat particles. The clumping first allows tiny air bubbles to be trapped in the cream, forming a light and airy product you might have had, called whipped cream.
Butter isn't traditionally vegan as it's typically a dairy product that's made from cow's milk that has been churned to separate the fat compounds. Vegans don't eat animal products so won't eat traditional butter.
A natural pigment, beta-carotene, provides this yellow colour. The presence of this carotene is also why butter is a source of Vitamin A. Cows that have been fed green fodder – such as grass – will tend to have more carotene in their milk, and therefore give yellower butter than cows fed on dry feed, like grains.