milk or cream damages the globules and frees
their fat to stick together in ever larger
masses, which we eventually sieve into the
golden hoard that imparts a warm, sweet
richness to many foods.
Ancient, Once Unfashionable All it takes to
separate the fat from milk is 30 seconds of
sloshing, so butter was no doubt discovered in
the earliest days of dairying. It has long been
important from Scandinavia to India, where
nearly half of all milk production goes to
making butter for both cooking and
ceremonial purposes. Its heyday came much
later in northern Europe, where throughout the
Middle Ages it was eaten mainly by peasants.
Butter slowly infiltrated noble kitchens as the
only animal fat allowed by Rome on days of
abstention from meat. In the early 16th
century it was also permitted during Lent, and
the rising middle classes adopted the rustic
coupling of bread and butter. Soon the English