The History of Butter

Butter is a dairy product and a type of fat used for cooking such as pan-cooking, baking and sauce-making. It is usually made from churning cream; stirring cream to separate the liquid from butter fat, which results in butter or buttermilk.

The earliest mentions of butter researchers have found were from all the way back to 2,500 years B.C in the Neolithic period (known as the Late Stone Age or New Stone Age). The first time butter was talked about was found in a limestone tablet which explains the process of butter-making by milking the cattle. Some still suppose that butter was discovered a longer time ago. During this time, butter was used as a ritual offering.

During the Medieval Ages, butter was occasionally perceived negatively by others so it was used often by peasants. As time goes by, it slowly became more accepted by upper classes until the Catholic Church decided to allow butter consumption in the late 16th century.

The combination of both butter and bread was common among the middle class. Butter was then recognized for its use as a sauce. The period before the Middle Ages, butter was also used as a fuel substitute in lamps.

In the 19th century, the industrialization of butter began to build up. Butter was made by hand or at farms to sell. Back then, they used wood presses on the butter to identify who created the butter by carving the producer's logo on the wood. This tradition was used until it was then mechanized.

Then in the late 1870s, Karl Gustaf De Laval, a Swedish inventor, introduced the idea of the centrifugal cream separator which was a success in marketing. The centrifugal cream separator is a machine used to separate milk from cream. This was used to make the process of butter-making more faster and quicker.

In the 20th century, the consumption and use of butter started to decline more in western places because of the increasing popularity of margarine; Margarine was known to have less and unsaturated fats, less expensive and lowers cholesterols. Butter was overtook by Margarine in the United States in the late 1950s. To this day, margarine is still used more than Butter.

SOURCES:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter

https://www.britannica.com/event/Neolithic

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/nutrition-and-dietetics/butter#:~:text=Butter%20is%20a%20food%20that,soft%20solid%20is%20called%20butter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustaf_de_Laval