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Butter

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Food and agriculture


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   Butter is commonly sold in sticks (pictured) or small blocks, and
   frequently served with the use of a butter knife.
   Enlarge
   Butter is commonly sold in sticks (pictured) or small blocks, and
   frequently served with the use of a butter knife.

   Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or
   milk. Butter is used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking
   applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying. As a result,
   butter is consumed daily in many parts of the world. Butter consists of
   butterfat surrounding minuscule droplets consisting mostly of water and
   milk proteins. The most common form of butter is made from cows' milk,
   but can also be made from the milk of other mammals, including sheep,
   goats, buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings, or preservatives are
   sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter produces clarified butter
   or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat.

   When refrigerated, butter remains a solid, but softens to a spreadable
   consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin liquid consistency
   at 32–35 °C (90–95 °F). Butter generally has a pale yellow color, but
   varies from deep yellow to nearly white. The colour of the butter
   depends on the animal's feed and is sometimes manipulated with food
   colorings, most commonly annatto or carotene.

   The term "butter" is used in the names of products made from puréed
   nuts or peanuts, such as peanut butter. It is also used in the names of
   fruit products, such as apple butter. Other fats solid at room
   temperature are also known as "butters"; examples include cocoa butter
   and shea butter. In general use, the term "butter", unqualified, almost
   always refers to the dairy product. The word butter, in the English
   language, derives (via Germanic languages) from the Latin butyrum,
   borrowed from the Greek boutyron. This may have been a construction
   meaning "cow-cheese" (bous "ox, cow" + tyros "cheese"), or the word may
   have been borrowed from another language, possibly Scythian. The root
   word persists in the butyric acid found in rancid butter and other
   rancid dairy products.

Butter production

   Today, commercial butter-making is a carefully-controlled operation.
   Enlarge
   Today, commercial butter-making is a carefully-controlled operation.

   Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in the form of
   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.

   Almost all commercially-made butter today begins with pasteurized
   cream, which is commonly heated to a relatively high temperature above
   80 °C (180 °F). Before it is churned, the cream is cooled to about 5 °C
   (40 °F) and allowed to remain at that temperature for at least eight
   hours; under these conditions about half the butterfat in the cream
   crystallizes. The jagged crystals of fat inflict damage upon the fat
   globule membranes during churning, speeding the butter-making process.

   Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water-based
   portion of the cream. This watery liquid is called buttermilk—although
   the buttermilk most common today is instead a 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 consists of many moderate-sized, saturated hydrocarbon chain
   fatty acids. It is a triglyceride, an ester derived from glycerol and
   three fatty acid groups. Butter becomes rancid when these chains break
   down into smaller components, like butyric acid and diacetyl. The
   density of butter is 911 kg/cubic meter.

Types of butter

   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 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. Today, cultured butter is usually made from pasteurized cream
   whose fermentation is produced by the introduction of Lactococcus and
   Leuconostoc bacteria.

   Another method for producing cultured butter, developed in the 1970s,
   is to produce butter from fresh cream and then incorporate bacterial
   cultures and lactic acid. Using this method, the cultured butter flavor
   grows as the butter is aged in cold storage. For manufacturers, this
   method is more efficient since aging the cream used to make butter
   takes significantly more space than simply storing the finished butter
   product. A similar and even more efficient method is to add lactic acid
   and flavor compounds directly to the fresh-cream butter; while this
   more efficient process simulates the taste of cultured butter, the
   product produced is not considered real cultured butter.

   Today, dairy products are often pasteurized during production to kill
   pathogenic bacteria and other microbes. Butter made from pasteurized
   fresh cream is called sweet cream butter. Production of sweet cream
   butter first became common in the 19th century, with the development of
   refrigeration and the mechanical cream separator. Butter made from
   fresh or cultured unpasteurized cream is called raw cream butter. Raw
   cream butter has a "cleaner" cream flavor, without the cooked-milk
   notes that pasteurization introduces.

   Throughout Continental Europe, cultured butter is preferred, while
   sweet cream butter dominates in the United States and the United
   Kingdom. Therefore, cultured butter is sometimes labeled European-style
   butter in the United States. Raw cream butter is virtually unheard-of
   in the United States, and is rare in Europe as well.

   Several spreadable butters have been developed; these remain softer at
   colder temperatures and are therefore easier to use directly out of
   refrigeration. Some modify the makeup of the butter's fat through
   chemical manipulation of the finished product, some through
   manipulation of the cattle's feed, and some by incorporating vegetable
   oils into the butter. Whipped butter, another product designed to be
   more spreadable, is aerated via the incorporation of nitrogen gas—
   normal air is not used, because doing so would encourage oxidation and
   rancidity.

   All categories of butter are sold in both salted and unsalted forms.
   Salted butters have either fine, granular salt or a strong brine added
   to them during the working. Nations that favor sweet cream butter tend
   to favour salted butter as well, possibly reflecting the blander taste
   of uncultured butter. In addition to flavoring the butter, the addition
   of salt also acts as a preservative.

   Another important aspect of production is the amount of butterfat in
   the finished product. In the United States, all products sold as
   "butter" must contain a minimum of 80% butterfat by weight; most
   American butters contain only slightly more than that, averaging around
   81%. European-style butters generally have a higher ratio of up to 85%
   butterfat. Clarified butter is butter with almost all of its water and
   milk solids removed, leaving almost-pure butterfat. Clarified butter is
   made by heating butter to its melting point and then allowing it to
   cool off; after settling, the remaining components separate by density.
   At the top, whey proteins form a skin which is removed, and the
   resulting butterfat is then poured off from the mixture of water and
   casein proteins that settle to the bottom. Ghee is clarified butter
   which is brought to higher temperatures (120 °C/250 °F) once the water
   has cooked off, allowing the milk solids to brown. This process
   flavours the ghee, and also produces antioxidants which help protect it
   longer from rancidity. Because of this, ghee can keep for six to eight
   months under normal conditions.

History

   Ancient butter-making techniques were still practiced in the early 20th
   century. Picture taken from March 1914 National Geographic.
   Enlarge
   Ancient butter-making techniques were still practiced in the early 20th
   century. Picture taken from March 1914 National Geographic.

   Since even accidental agitation can turn cream into butter, it is
   likely that the invention of butter goes back to the earliest days of
   dairying, perhaps in the Mesopotamian area between 9000 and 8000  BCE.
   The earliest butter would have been from sheep or goat's milk; cattle
   are not thought to have been domesticated for another thousand years or
   so. An ancient method of butter making, still used today in some parts
   of Africa and the Near East, is shown in the photo at right, taken in
   Palestine. A goat skin is half filled with milk, then inflated with air
   and sealed. It is then hung with ropes on a tripod of sticks and rocked
   to and fro until the butter is formed.

   Butter was certainly known in the classical Mediterranean
   civilizations, but it does not seem to have been a common food,
   especially in Ancient Greece or Rome. In the warm Mediterranean
   climate, unclarified butter would spoil very quickly— unlike cheese, it
   was not a practical method of preserving the benefits of milk. The
   people of ancient Greece and Rome seemed to consider butter a food fit
   more for the northern barbarians. A play by the Greek comic poet
   Anaxandrides refers to Thracians as boutyrophagoi, "butter-eaters".
   Pliny's Natural History calls butter "the most delicate of food among
   barbarous nations", and goes on to describe its medicinal properties.

   Historian and linguist Andrew Dalby says that most references to butter
   in ancient Near Eastern texts should actually be translated instead as
   ghee. Ghee is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as a
   typical trade article around the 1st century CE Arabian Sea, and Roman
   geographer Strabo describes it as a commodity of Arabia and Sudan. In
   India, ghee has been a symbol of purity and an offering to the
   gods—especially Agni, the Hindu god of fire—for more than 3000 years;
   references to ghee's sacred nature appear numerous times in the Rig
   Veda, circa 1500–1200 BCE. The tale of the child Krishna stealing
   butter remains a popular children's story in India today. Since India's
   prehistory, ghee has been both a staple food and used for ceremonial
   purposes such as fueling holy lamps and funeral pyres.
   Butter-making woman, Compost et Kalendrier des Bergères, Paris, 1499.
   Enlarge
   Butter-making woman, Compost et Kalendrier des Bergères, Paris, 1499.

   Cooler climates in northern Europe allowed butter to be kept longer
   before spoiling. Scandinavia has the longest history in Europe of a
   butter export trade, dating at least to the 12th century. Across most
   of Europe after the fall of Rome and through much of the Middle Ages,
   butter was a common food, but one with a low reputation; it was
   consumed principally by peasants. It slowly became more accepted by the
   upper class, especially when, in the early 16th century, the Roman
   Catholic Church permitted its consumption during Lent. Bread and butter
   became common fare among the new middle class, and the English, in
   particular, gained a reputation for their liberal use of melted butter
   as a sauce for meats and vegetables.

   Across far-northern Europe—Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, and
   Scandinavia—butter was sometimes treated in a manner unheard-of today:
   it was 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 unique cool, airless,
   antiseptic and acidic environment of a peat bog. Firkins of such buried
   butter are a common archaeological find in Ireland; the Irish National
   Museum 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.

   France, like Ireland, became well-known for its butter, particularly in
   the Normandy and Brittany regions. By the 1860s, butter had become so
   in demand in France that Emperor Napoleon III offered prize money for
   an inexpensive substitute to supplement France's inadequate butter
   supplies. In 1869, a French chemist claimed the prize with the
   invention of margarine. The first margarine was beef tallow flavored
   with milk and worked like butter; vegetable margarines followed after
   the development of hydrogenated oils around 1900.

   Until the 19th century, the vast majority of butter was made by hand,
   on farms. 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. This dramatically sped the butter-making
   process by eliminating the slow step of letting cream naturally rise to
   the top of milk. Initially, whole milk was shipped to the butter
   factories, and the cream separation took place there. Soon, though,
   cream-separation technology became small and inexpensive enough to
   introduce an additional efficiency: the separation was accomplished on
   the farm, and the cream alone shipped to the factory. By 1900, more
   than half the butter produced in the United States was factory made;
   Europe followed suit shortly after.

   Per capita butter consumption declined in most western nations during
   the 20th century, in large part 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 most
   other nations that track such data.

Shape of Butter Sticks

   In the United States, butter sticks are usually produced and sold in
   eight-tablespoon (approximately 74 ml) sticks, wrapped in wax paper and
   sold four to a carton. This practice is believed to have originated in
   1907 when Swift and Company began packaging butter in this manner for
   mass distribution. Due to historical variances in butter printers,
   these sticks are commonly produced in two differing shapes. The
   dominant shape east of the Rocky Mountains is the Elgin, or
   Eastern-pack shape. This shape was originally developed by the Elgin
   Butter Tub Company, founded in 1882 in Elgin, Illinois and Rock Falls,
   Illinois. The sticks are 4.75" long and 1.25" wide, and are usually
   sold in flat, rectangular boxes packed side-by-side. Among the early
   butter printers to use this shape was the Elgin Butter Cutter.

   West of the Rocky Mountains, butter printers standardized on a
   different shape that is now referred to as the Western-Pack shape..
   These butter sticks are 3.125" long and 1.5" wide and are typically
   sold stacked 2x2 in a taller, boxy container.

   Both sticks contain the same amount of butter, although most butter
   dishes are designed for Elgin-style butter sticks.

Worldwide

   A tub of butter
   Enlarge
   A tub of butter

   India produces and consumes more butter than any other nation,
   dedicating almost half of its annual milk production to making butter
   or ghee. In 1997, India produced 1,470,000  metric tons of butter,
   consuming almost all of it. Second in production was the United States
   (522,000 tons), then France (466,000), Germany (442,000), and New
   Zealand (307,000). In terms of consumption, Germany was second after
   India, using 578,000 tons of butter in 1997, followed by France
   (528,000), Russia (514,000), and the United States (505,000). Most
   nations produce and consume the bulk of their butter domestically. New
   Zealand, Australia, and the Ukraine are among the few nations that
   export a significant percentage of the butter they produce.

   Different varieties of butter are found around the world. Smen is a
   spiced Moroccan clarified butter, buried in the ground and aged for
   months or years. Yak butter is important in Tibet; tsampa, barley flour
   mixed with yak butter, is a staple food. Butter tea is consumed in the
   Himalayan regions of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and India. It consists of tea
   served with intensely flavored — or "rancid"—yak butter and salt. In
   African and Asian developing nations, butter is traditionally made from
   sour milk rather than cream. It can take several hours of churning to
   produce workable butter grains from fermented milk.

Storage and cooking

   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 odours. Wrapped butter has a
   shelf life of several months at refrigerator temperatures.

   "French butter dishes" or " Acadian butter dishes" involve a lid with a
   long interior lip, which sits in a container holding a small amount of
   water. Usually the dish holds just enough water to submerge the
   interior lip when the dish is closed. Butter is packed into the lid.
   The water acts as a seal to keep the butter fresh, and also keeps the
   butter from overheating in hot temperatures. This allows butter to be
   safely stored on the countertop for several days without spoilage.

   Once butter is softened, spices, herbs, or other flavoring agents can
   be mixed into it, producing what is called a composed butter or
   composite butter. Composed butters can be used as spreads, or cooled,
   sliced, and placed onto hot food to melt into a sauce. Sweetened
   composed butters can be served with desserts; such hard sauces are
   often flavored with spirits.
   Hollandaise sauce served over white asparagus and potatoes.
   Enlarge
   Hollandaise sauce served over white asparagus and potatoes.

   Melted butter plays an important role in the preparation of sauces,
   most obviously in French cuisine. Beurre noisette (hazel butter) and
   Beurre noir (black butter) are sauces of melted butter cooked until the
   milk solids and sugars have turned golden or dark brown; they are often
   finished with an addition of vinegar or lemon juice. Hollandaise and
   béarnaise sauces are emulsions of egg yolk and melted butter; they are
   in essence mayonnaises made with butter instead of oil. Hollandaise and
   béarnaise sauces are stabilized with the powerful emulsifiers in the
   egg yolks, but butter itself contains enough emulsifiers—mostly
   remnants of the fat globule membranes—to form a stable emulsion on its
   own. Beurre blanc (white butter) is made by whisking butter into
   reduced vinegar or wine, forming an emulsion with the texture of thick
   cream. Beurre monté (prepared butter) is an unflavored beurre blanc
   made from water instead of vinegar or wine; it lends its name to the
   practice of "mounting" a sauce with butter: whisking cold butter into
   any water-based sauce at the end of cooking, giving the sauce a thicker
   body and a glossy shine—as well as a buttery taste.

   Butter is used for sautéing and frying, although its milk solids brown
   and burn above 150 °C (250 °F)—a rather low temperature for most
   applications. The actual smoke point of butterfat is around 200 °C
   (400 °F), so clarified butter or ghee is better suited to frying. Ghee
   has always been a common frying medium in India, where many avoid other
   animal fats for cultural or religious reasons.

   Butter fills several roles in baking, where it is used in a similar
   manner as other solid fats like lard, suet, or shortening, but has a
   flavor that may better complement sweet baked goods. Many cookie doughs
   and some cake batters are leavened, at least in part, by creaming
   butter and sugar together, which introduces air bubbles into the
   butter. The tiny bubbles locked within the butter expand in the heat of
   baking and aerate the cookie or cake. Some cookies like shortbread may
   have no other source of moisture but the water in the butter. Pastries
   like pie dough incorporate pieces of solid fat into the dough, which
   become flat layers of fat when the dough is rolled out. During baking,
   the fat melts away, leaving a flaky texture. Butter, because of its
   flavor, is a common choice for the fat in such a dough, but it can be
   more difficult to work with than shortening because of its low melting
   point. Pastry makers often chill all their ingredients and utensils
   while working with a butter dough.

Health and nutrition

          Butter, unsalted
   Nutritional value per 100 g
      Energy 720 kcal   3000 kJ

   Carbohydrates            0 g
   Fat                      81 g
   - saturated  51 g
   - monounsaturated  21 g
   - polyunsaturated  3 g
   Protein                  1 g
   Vitamin A  684 μg        76%
   Cholesterol              215 mg
      Fat percentage can vary.
   See also Types of butter.
   Percentages are relative to US
   recommendations for adults.
   Source: USDA Nutrient database

   According to USDA figures, one tablespoon of butter (14  grams)
   contains 100  calories, all from fat, 11 grams of fat, of which 7 grams
   are saturated fat, and 30  milligrams of cholesterol. In other words,
   butter consists mostly of saturated fat and is a significant source of
   dietary cholesterol. For these reasons, butter has been generally
   considered to be a contributor to health problems, especially heart
   disease. For many years, vegetable margarine was recommended as a
   substitute, since it is an unsaturated fat and contains little or no
   cholesterol. In recent decades, though, it has become accepted that the
   trans fats contained in partially hydrogenated oils used in typical
   margarines significantly raise "bad" LDL cholesterol levels as well.
   Trans-fat free margarines have since been developed.

   Small amounts of butter contain only traces of lactose, so moderate
   consumption of butter is not generally a problem for those with lactose
   intolerance. People with milk allergies do need to avoid butter, which
   does contain enough of the allergy-causing proteins to cause reactions.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter"
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