On Food and Cooking

of  the cream   (leaving    behind  some    whey

that    will    be  in  the bottom) and strew   some

more    sugar   upon    that.

—   Sir Kenelm  Digby,  The Closet  Opened,

1669

Butter and Margarine

These days, if a cook actually manages to
make butter in the kitchen, it’s most likely a
disaster: a cream dish has been mishandled
and the fat separates from the other
ingredients. That’s a shame: all cooks should
relax now and then and intentionally overwhip
some cream! The coming of butter is an
everyday miracle, an occasion for delighted
wonder at what the Irish poet Seamus Heaney
called “coagulated sunlight” “heaped up like
gilded gravel in the bowl.” Milkfat is indeed a
portion of the sun’s energy, captured by the
grasses of the field and repackaged by the cow
in scattered, microscopic globules. Churning