Butter, The History

[Guest guest]

http://webexhibits.org/butter/index.html

Excellent site about the history of butter and lots more. Great pictures

too.

--

[Guest guest]

>http://webexhibits.org/butter/index.html

>

>Excellent site about the history of butter and lots more. Great pictures

>too.

>

wow! nice find! here are a few excerpts for anyone who didn't read it:

" Butter is a culinary treasure as old as King Tut's tomb. " She brought forth

butter in a lordly dish " (Judges 5:25). A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and

butter! Pure butter is produced today essentially as it was in King Tut's

time, though butter made of milk from cows instead of camels or water

buffaloes. "

" Naturally, it is presumed that in four thousand years there has been

considerable improvement in the manufacture of butter although we, of

course, know little more of the method by which produced butter for

the angels than we know of the means employed in the construction of the

pyramids. The earliest details of method of manufacture are derived from the

Arabs and Syrians, who appear to be as well satisfied with the original

process of making butter as they are with other habits, since they have

remained unchanged for centuries. The original practice of the Arabs and

Syrians, so far as is known, was to use vessel made from goatskin for a

churn. The animal was skinned, the skin sewed up tight, leaving an opening

only at the left foreleg, where the cream was poured in. The " churn " was

then suspended from the tent poles and swung until the " butter comes. " This,

incidentally, is the earliest known process of making butter. "

" Some of the commonest archaeological finds in Ireland are barrels of

ancient butter, buried in the bogs. The Norsemen, the Finns, the Icelanders,

and the Scots had done the same: they flavored butter heavily with garlic,

knuckled it into a wooden firkin, and buried it for years in the bogs-for so

long that people were known to plant trees to mark the butter's burial site.

The longer it was left, the more delicious it became. A further advantage

was doubtless the safety of supplies from robbers, or enemies in wartime.

Most of the Irish archaeological specimens date from the seventeenth and

early eighteenth centuries. Although some of our sources imply that bog

butter turned red, the firkins in the Irish National Museum contain " a

grayish cheese-like substance, partially hardened, not much like butter, and

quite free from putrefaction " because of the cool, antiseptic, anaerobic,

and acidic properties of peat bogs. "

" Dairy work included milking, making cream and butter, and also the

sophisticated art of making cheese. In Europe it was always done by women.

The word " dairy " is from Middle English dey - a female servant. The dairy

was associated with the house as opposed to the lands; " inside " has always

been female in the Western imagination, and " outside " male, so that the

man's place was in the public eye while the woman's was at home. Also, milk

was perhaps considered self-evidently a woman's affair. "

cool pictures on this site too - ancient butter casks, butter stamps, etc

:-)

Suze Fisher

Lapdog Design, Inc.

Web Design & Development

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3shjg

Weston A. Price Foundation Chapter Leader, Mid Coast Maine

http://www.westonaprice.org

----------------------------

" The diet-heart idea (the idea that saturated fats and cholesterol cause

heart disease) is the greatest scientific deception of our times. " --

Mann, MD, former Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry at Vanderbilt

University, Tennessee; heart disease researcher.

The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics

<http://www.thincs.org>

----------------------------