29Jerseys. These days, outside several
fine-dining restaurants, St. Clair’s Ani-
ma l Fa rm butter is only available once
a year at the Middlebury Natural Food
Co-op and at Saxelby Cheesemongers
in New York. The butter comes in the
same Ziploc bag, costs $50 a pound, and
sells out within hours.
For most of my life I’ve been preoc-
cupied w ith butter. Of course there are
those culinary Bartlebys who believe
it to be nothing more than a baking
ingredient or, worse, a condiment.
Nutritionists continue to dispute its
merits. Oh, I could tell you that Tibet-
ans make it into sacred sculptures and
the ancient Finns were buried along-
side barrels of it, but I won’t. I will tell
you, though, that for diehards likeies across the city, especially the dense,
chocolate-hued loaves topped with
coriander called Borodinsky. Naturally,
they required butter. This became the
best par t of my midday mea ls, eaten in
the school cafeteria under portraits of
jowly Politburo chiefs. The slightly sour
bread was the foil for the Platonic but-
ter of my memories that opened with
bright, creamy sweetness and, after a
tangy sour note, faded in a long, lightly
nutty finish. The mouthfeel was firm
and unctuous but never greasy.
Somehow, as an adult, I began to for-
get butter. I ate supermarket brands
and assumed that my longing was a
figment of childhood nostalgia. Then,
several years ago, while in Reims, I
tasted a butter that obliterated theslippery and enigmatic. First, I visited
New York’s Russian-Jewish enclave,
Brighton Beach, for several specimens
made in the land of my birth. I found
them in a store with smooth jazz on
the speakers and the delightful name
of Gourmanoff. Unfortunately, these
items turned out to be mi x tures of but-
ter and vegetable oil with the texture
of margarine. Premium and imported
brands from the grocery store didn’t
approach the experience I remembered
either. Most tasted waxy, grainy, or dull,
with no discernible finish.
I knew it was time to get serious.
So, several months ago, I delved into
the surprisingly contentious thickets
of butter connoisseurship. I wanted
to understand what drove the most
obsessed of its producers, and which
criteria they prized. I ate more of it
than might be medically advisable. I’d
assumed I knew my butter, but here’s
what I learned: Sometimes the thing
we love is the one we know least of all.Above: St. Clair with one of her 11 Jersey
cows on her Vermont property. Right:
Dandelion-yellow and uncommonly
expensive, her butter is served at Thomas
Keller’s restaurants and is only available
once a year to consumers.COLIN CLARK
me, butter is the purpose of mashed
potatoes, scones, and summer corn,
the reason that bread exists, the very
fulcrum of eating. What moves me
about butter is that unlike cheese or
pastry, its essence isn’t confected but
comes directly from the land. Elaine
Khosrova, the author of Butter: A Rich
History, described it to me as “a pure pre-
sentation of man, land, and beast.” Like
oysters and wine, it’s one of the perks
of being born on this planet.
My obsession with butter began
among identical rows of tenements on
the outskirts of Moscow where I grew
up in the late 1970s. The g roceries in our
sparsely populated supermarket aisles
ranged from unexciting to barely edible;
one of the few exceptions was the fresh
rye bread sold every morning in baker-memory of the very worthwhile Cham-
pagnes on the table. It was made by
Jean-Yves Bordier in Brittany, and was
not imported to the United States. But
the experience of Bordier stayed with
me. In time, it ignited a determination
to recapture the taste I remembered.
Finding a stand-in for the bread of
my childhood took no time at all. The
crusty miche from Bien Cuit, a bak-
ery near my home in Brooklyn, was a
delicious substitute for the Borodin-
sky. But replicating the butter provedT
he further I waded into what
makes for great butter, the
less tractable my search
became. Many aficionados
insist that culturing—the extra step of
allowing the cream to ferment before
it’s churned—is the key to deep flavor.
Certainly the best cultured butters
(sometimes labeled “European-style”)
possess a subtle tangy note that can add
complexity, but the process does not
assure a superior product. Some of
the butters I enjoyed most happened