On Food and Cooking

were notorious for serving meats and
vegetables swimming in melted butter, and
cooks throughout Europe exploited butter in a
host of fine foods, from sauces to pastries.
Normandy and Brittany in northwest
France, Holland, and Ireland became
especially renowned for the quality of their
butter. Most of it was made on small farms
using cream that was pooled from several
milkings, and was therefore a day or two old
and somewhat soured by lactic acid bacteria.
Continental Europe still prefers the flavor of
this lightly fermented “cultured” butter to the
“sweet cream” butter made common in the
19th century by the use of ice, the
development of refrigeration, and the
mechanical cream separator.
Around 1870, a shortage of butter in
France led to the invention of an imitation,
margarine, which could be made from a
variety of cheap animal fats and vegetable
oils. More margarine than butter is now