Butter: A Book Review and Reminiscence

Butter! (c) 2017 Gena Philibert-Ortega

What are your earliest memories of butter? Did your mom cook with butter? Was it in a butter dish on the family table? Did a family member's occupation involve butter or a dairy?

I grew up in a family who  never ate butter. We used margarine out of a store brand goldenrod colored tub. We didn't bake and rarely went out to eat so I didn't see a lot of butter growing up. I don't think I knew anyone who used butter instead of margarine. Margarine was the cost effective alternative and since we didn't eat a lot of bread outside of sandwiches (always with Miracle Whip)  there was not much reason  for even using the margarine we did have access to.

Butter!

Not surprisingly, I'm a big fan of food history books and one of the latest I've read is Butter: A Rich History by Elaine Khosrova. Now you might be thinking, "What? Why are you reading a whole book about butter!?" This is a topic that warrants a whole book treatment and actually could have included even more chapters in my opinion. There's a lot covered in this work including interesting narratives about the making of butter then and now worldwide, the tools associated with butter production, and the surprising (to me) discussion about gender and early butter history that should be especially interesting to family historians. Of course, because of my family history of margarine,  I was especially interested in that chapter.

You may think that butter, margarine, oleo, etc are boring and there's not much to discover. But you couldn't be more wrong. I don't want to give away too much but let's just say that butter making had a dark side, margarine had an even darker side, and the law, dairy industry, and others got involved. I knew a little bit about this history because of the fabulous research that Tammy Hepps has done on her Margarine Moonshiners where she weaves history and family history to tell the story of margarine.(You can watch a short version of her presentation here). Hepps' ancestors sold really bad margarine as butter which was illegal and they ended up in Leavenworth. I would love to introduce Elaine Khosrova to  Hepps. The book's discussion of that history would benefit from Hepps real-life examples. Food history does influence  family history!

Butter Table of Contents 1

Butter Table of Contents 2

This book has so many surprises  including butter's connection to the Hindu religion and butter sculpting. A seemingly simple topic is dissected and explained.

This book is food history but it provides information that could be considered essential to some people's family history and so it should be of interest to the food and family historian.

What's your story....?

So what's your family's butter story? Did anyone work for a dairy? Deliver milk? Any dairy farmers? Maybe like Tammy you have someone who was arrested for passing margarine off as butter.

What memories do you have of  butter or margarine ? Did you use dye packets to color margarine? Did you use oleo?What family recipes do you have that utilize butter?

Yes, I realize butter seems like a weird topic for genealogy but food history is family history and butter may be the root of some interesting stories in your family.



Resources

Mental Floss - The Surprisingly Interesting  History of Margarine

National Geographic - The Butter Wars: When Margarine was Pink

Smithsonian - Food Dye Origins: When Margarine was Pink