How much do you know about butter? Probably not as much as you think.
Butter
Contrary to popular belief by the young, butter doesn’t just magically appear on store shelves. It’s a dairy product produced by churning fresh—from real animals, usually cows—milk or cream.
The Beginning
While butter’s origin dates back to when animals were first domesticated, exactly when it showed up isn’t known. Some say 4,500 years ago. Others claim it could be 8,000, 9,000, or even 10,000 years ago. Regardless, it’s safe to say butter has been around a very long time.
And who was the brilliant inventor of butter? Though it can’t be proven, it’s believed we have nomadic people to thank for this creamy goodness. The theory is the discovery was a happy accident. Someone filled sheepskin bags with milk, secured the bags to their pack animals, and, like magic while they traveled, all the jostling churned the milk into butter.
Did You Know…
- A thousand years prior to cows being domesticated, humans got their milk from goats, sheep, and yaks. Over time, this expanded to include other animals, including cows, reindeer, camels, and water buffalo.
- The oldest written reference to butter comes from a 4,500-year-old limestone tablet, illustrating how butter was made.
- The Bible’s first mention of butter is when Abraham and Sarah were visited by the three angels. Genesis 18:8 And he [Abraham] took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat. [King James Version]
- Egyptians plumped the skin of their mummies with a paste made of butter, dirt, and sawdust. (Sort of an early Botox treatment for the newly dead.)
- The word butter probably originated with boutyron, the Greek word for “cow cheese.”
- Both the Greeks and Romans used butter mainly for medicinal purposes. The Romans swallowed it for coughs and used it externally to heal wounds, improve skin, and ease aching joints.
- Since the transformation from milk to butter seemed magical, some ancient civilizations honored their gods with an offering of butter.
Nourishment
Learning how to make butter played a big role in the development of human culture. It also provided needed nourishment. It’s believed adults of the distant past were mostly lactose intolerant, so they didn’t drink raw milk, but consumed lots of butter, cheese, and yogurt. The production of these dairy items provided a year-round source of nourishment.
By the Middle Ages, people—rich and poor—loved and ate butter. The pilgrims brought butter to America, and it quickly became an important farm product. Until the nineteenth century, butter was made by hand-churning.
Did You Know…
- Butter was most popular in northern Europe’s colder climate. Southern Europeans weren’t as sold on it. It spoiled faster in the warm weather, and they didn’t really need it since they had an abundance of olive oil for their bread. Mediterranean people considered butter to be food fit only for their unfriendly, northern neighbors—the barbarians.
- In the Middle Ages during Lent, the Catholic Church prohibited people from eating butter. The rich got around this month-long ban by paying a special fee—can we say “bribe”—to the church. The Lent Butter Ban didn’t end until sometime in the seventeenth century.
- Butter was used as a substitute for oil in lamps.
- Rancid butter—served in a dining hall at Harvard University in 1766—inspired the first known student protest in U.S. history.
To Be Continued…
Since I didn’t know as much about butter as I thought, I didn’t realize how many interesting things there were to share. Too much for one Did You Know. So come back next week for the conclusion of Did You Know Butter, Part II.