Spreading the Word About Butter!

I have a fascination with all things petrified. Fossilized dinosaurs, mammoths, mummies in ancient Egypt, Bog Bodies in Northern Europe, Otzi frozen in the Alps, the bodies in Pompeii, I could go on forever! These petrified remains of people, animals, and plants are not only biologically cool, but they are also a snapshot in time. A paused movie with the characters suspended in their last actions. But of all these petrified remains, one of my favorites is bog butter. Between the Iron Age and medieval times, ancient Celtic people would bury butter in the local bogs. The bogs, made of peat and with a cool, low-oxygen, high acid environment, served as a source of natural refrigeration. Like a refrigerator, archeologists believe the Celtics hid their butter in bogs as either a form of preservation or as religious offerings. Butter was a valuable commodity at the time both in terms of nourishment and as a form of exchange, so it made sense to save butter for hard times and to hide it from thieves (Daley, 2016).

Bog Butter at the Cork Butter Museum a must see for butter and food enthusiasts alike, Cork, Ireland. Photo by Rachel Snyder

Today the butter we buy in stores tastes very different from these preserved lumps found in bogs (bog butter would have been very pungent like an aged cheese). However, little has changed in how butter is made and how humans consume and place cultural meaning to the yellow spread.

Butter is made from heavy cream from the milk of ruminants (i.e. cows, goats, sheep, yak, buffalo, etc.). Heavy cream is able to become butter because it is an emulsion. An emulsion is when one substance is suspended in another substance in tiny globules. These two substances never mix. The emulsion that makes up heavy cream is water with globules of fat suspended and surrounded by a membrane of phospholipids and proteins. In the butter making process, these globules are slammed against each other, causing them to stick together until they form a lump of butter. The remaining liquid is the buttermilk. The buttermilk sold in grocery stores is different from this residual liquid, as it is only milk that has been soured from the addition of an acid (Oklahoma Cooperative Extension, n.d.).

The emulsion in milk vs butter. Source: https://scienceandfooducla.wordpress.com/2013/05/28/homemade-butter/

While there is a debate as to whether cheese came before butter, anthropologists largely agree that butter production started in the Neolithic when the first Stone Age ancestors succeeded in domesticating ruminants. The theory is that a prehistoric shepherd accidently discovered butter when, upon placing butter in a sack made from animal skin and traversing over a bumpy route for hours, the rhythmic movement of his trek generated solid lumps in an opaque liquid (Khosrova, 2017, 267). The taste of these lumps must have appealed to the theoretical prehistoric shepherd, as butter making spread throughout the Middle East, Indus Valley, Africa and eventually to Europe. 

Since that fateful shepherd, butter has taken on special culinary and cultural significance. The first written evidence of butter comes from 4,500-year-old limestone tablets detailing the butter-making process. Ancient Sumerians offered butter to the fertility goddess Inanna, protector of the seasons and harvest. Indian Hindus have made offerings of ghee, clarified butter or butter oil, to Lord Krishna for over 3,000 years. Ancient Romans associated butter with barbarism, but they, along with Ancient Egyptians and Greeks, also used it medicinally and cosmetically, applying it to their hair and skin (Jankowski, 2017). In addition to bog butter, Scandinavian and other Northern European peasants used butter as a form of tender to pay their taxes to the lord. 

Butter came to the United States with European colonists, who brought their dairy cows with them. Soon after their arrival, the colonists replicated butter’s cultural importance in their new home. The first student protests in the U.S. were over butter. Harvard University’s Great Butter Rebellion of 1766 started in response to students being served rancid butter in the dining hall (Jankowski, 2017). While butter’s long standing rivalry with margarine and the recent heath fads denouncing fats in general and butter in particular have resulted in decreased consumption of butter in the U.S. and Europe, it still remains an essential part of the culture and cuisine of people around the world.

Harvard University's Great Butter Rebellion of 1766 occurred after the students, suffering from the abominable dining hall food, finally had enough when they were served rancid butter. Source:https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/harvards-long-ago-student-risings/.

Those cultures and butter’s manifestations within them are more diverse than you would think. In the U.S. we associate butter with European culture. We conjure images of angelic milkmaids, pastoral vistas of docile cows grazing, and the wholesome combination of bread and butter, simultaneously symbolizing abundance, purity, and humility. Thus, we tend to associate butter with Europe and her colonies. However, butter production started in the Middle East and Africa, and it never left. 

Despite our association of cows with butter, the first butter would have probably come from goats, sheep, or camel milk, and in many countries in Africa camel milk is still the main source of dairy products. Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mauritania-camels/camel-milk-put-it-on-your-face-as-well-as-drink-it-idUSL0372229420070403.

Africa’s dairy countries run from just south of the Sahara east to the Horn of Africa (i.e. Ethiopia, Uganda, Somalia, and Kenya), down the eastern highlands and into the south (Abdelgadir el al, 1998, 2). Due to the warmer climate, butter in Africa is usually made from soured or fermented milk, and, to increase its shelf life, it is typically cooked and churned into a butter oil or ghee. In the Sahara, for Tuareg nomads of the Ahaggar (Algerian Sahara) milk remains a staple food and butter is made from camel milk. To increase its shelf life, the butter is made into a strained butter oil similar to ghee (Khosrova, 28). In Uganda, the cattle corridor which, stretches from the Southwest to the Northeast, is home to the cattle-herding Bantu and Nilotic who still practice traditional ghee production (Wasswa el at, 2017, 11759). Based on archaeological evidence, Sudan’s cattle culture stretches back at least 5,000 years, compared to only 4,000 years north of the country in Nubia and southern Egypt. Archaeologists have found skulls of cattle ceremonially placed in human graves, and, among the Jebel Moya in central Sudan, people had burial grounds for their cattle. Later civilizations in the area are characterized by their rock drawings and pottery featuring cattle and vessels filled with milk. The classical Greek writer Strabo (7 BC) even mentioned the people of the area, Meroites (called Ethiopians by classic writers), as eating cheese and butter (Abdelgadir, 1). Today, milk and milk products remain an essential part of the diet and lifestyle of nomadic tribes throughout the country. 

The African Continent. Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Africa-Map-Maps-of-World-2014_fig1_319459630.

My interest in butter in Africa sprung from the discovery of smen, Moroccan fermented butter. While Morocco is not apart of the main dairy cultures in Africa, smen serves a significant cultural role in Moroccan cuisine. Smen, similar to ghee in other parts of Africa and India, is fermented as a means to increase butter’s shelf life (and flavor). The acidity that forms from fermentation protects the butter from bad bacteria, but it also gives the butter a funky, cheesy aroma. The butter is used in cooking, especially couscous, spread on bread, and even put in coffee. Being energy dense and filling, it is also used extensively during Ramadan. Smen has been described as being like a fine wine that gets better with age, so the longer smen ages the more expensive and the smoother the texture. A legend attached to smen is that Berber tribesmen would bury a clay jar of smen on the day of their daughter’s birth and unearth it to use to prepare her wedding day feast (Schmidt, 2014).

Like most products that were once produced at home or sourced locally, smen is now mass produced and available in grocery stores. Source: https://www.zamourispices.com/smen-p/smen.htm.

When I asked my friend Mouna from Morocco about smen, her first response was that it “smells bad” and her grandmother likes it. Smen is obviously an acquired taste, one that the younger generation is not keen on. However, fascinated, I decided to make my own smen. First I made butter by taking heavy cream and agitating it. I tried two methods, the jar and the stand mixer. While the jar method is great for getting kids to expend some of their energy, the mixer is much faster and a lot less arm work. If you have some unsalted butter on hand, you can just use that as well. After making the butter, make oregano tea (discarding the dried oregano leaves), and once that cools, message the tea and salt into the butter. Then place in an airtight jar and store in a cool space. You can always bury you jar or clay pot in the ground if you are feeling y, but a cupboard will do fine. Now let it sit for at least a month. The longer it sits, the funkier the favor. Check back to see how my smen turns out. 

WWII propaganda promoting the consumption of dairy products. Source: https://www.skagitcounty.net/Departments/HistoricalSociety/ww2ads/26.htm.

During World War II, a common mantra was that the U.S. would win the war with “bombs and butter,” signifying the importance of the yellow spread in American and European culture and identity. However, the culture of butter and dairy goes beyond the confines of Europe and the dominance of the cow. Even in places with no PDO cheeses or large herds of black and white Holsteins or doe-eyed Jerseys, dairy is still a staple of the diet and a defining part of the history and culture. Today these dairy products are even more important to the nutrition of the region. According to the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Shenggen Fan, the promotion of dairy and other livestock products in famine-prone African nations like Ethiopia is essential to tackling issues of malnutrition (2019). Furthermore, as the main producers of these products, promoting their production also serves as a means to increase the economic and social status of women in these countries. Next time you slather butter on your morning toast, remember that you are part of a larger, more extensive, and older culture of people who love butter.  

Make Your Own Smen: https://www.thespruceeats.com/smen-moroccan-preserved-butter-with-thyme-2394939

Works Cited

Abdelgadir, W. S., Ahmed, T. K., & Dirar, H. A. (1998). The traditional fermented milk products of the Sudan. International Journal of Food Microbiology, 44, 1-13

Daley, J. (2016 Jun 13). A brief history of bog butter. Smithsonian.Retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-brief-history-of-bog-butter-180959384/.

Fan, S. (2019 Jan 25). Healthy diets and sustainable food systems for all: A differentiated approach for animal-sources foods (ASFs). IFPRI Blog. Retrieved from https://www.ifpri.org/blog/healthy-diets-and-sustainable-food-systems-all-differentiated-approach-animal-sourced-foods.

Jankowski, N. (2017 Feb 24). Spread the word: Butter has an epic backstory. NPR The Salt. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/02/24/515422661/spread-the-word-butter-has-an-epic-backstory.

Khosrova, E. (2017). Butter: A Rich History. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.

Oklahoma Cooperative Extension. (n.d.). The chemistry of butter. Ag in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://aitc.okstate.edu/lessons/dairy/butter.pdf.

Schmidt, A. (2014 Oct 9). Smen is Morocco’s funky fermented butter that lasts for years. NPR The Salt. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/10/09/353510171/smen-is-moroccos-funky-fermented-butter-that-lasts-for-years.

Wasswa, J., Sempiira, E. J., Mugisa, D. J., Muyanja, C., & Kisaalita, W. S. (2017). Quality assessment of butter produced using traditional and mechanized churning methods. African Journal of Food, Agricultire, Nutrition and Development, 17(1): 11757-11770.