
Is the world's best butter worth 50 dollars a pound? (2017) - emptybits
https://www.saveur.com/worlds-best-fancy-butter/
======
yumraj
Back in India milk used to be delivered by milkmen everyday. It was
unpasteurized, so my mom would boil it and let it cool before consumption,
which left a thick slice of cream on top of it.

It was collected, and after several weeks worth had accumulated, yogurt was
used to ferment it for a few days and then churned to make white homemade
butter. It tasted divine with a little salt and pepper on bread.

Of course, a lot of that butter was used to make Ghee, whose delicious smell
permeated the whole home.

And the brown leftover,after making ghee, milk solids tasted amazing with a
little sugar.

Ah, the memories...

~~~
searchableguy
Isn't the smell of ghee (especially when making at home) too strong?

I remember someone in the house making it and I couldn't breathe in the
kitchen when it was there.

~~~
osrec
I'm Indian, and I can confirm that I do not like the smell of ghee, and
neither do my siblings.

In fact, if food has too much ghee in it, it can make us want to throw up! We
seem to have no problem with butter itself, but the smell of ghee is just too
difficult to stomach for us.

~~~
danielheath
Thanks for clarifying :)

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mauvehaus
Pun intended?

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Xcelerate
Interesting to see this article pop up. I recently became obsessed with
finding the best butter after having some on a trip to France last year, and
so I rounded up a few contenders and my wife and I did a double-blind taste
test. All butter was demi-sel. Results were:

    
    
        1. Échiré
        2. Rodolphe Le Meunier
        3. Isigny Sainte-Mère
        4. Bordier (!)
        5. Clover
    

Clover came in dead last by far, even though it's generally considered a
respectable northern California butter. More surprisingly, neither my wife nor
I liked Bordier much at all (and it was difficult to find — we ended up
locating small samples of it at ONE65 in SF). It definitely had the most
unique flavor and color of the batch, although I can't say it was one that I
found very pleasing. I'm almost wondering if I got a bad batch since everyone
raves about it so much. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get ahold of Diane St.
Clair's butter to test, although I would love to try it at some point.

Échiré though is amazing. I can't get enough of it. I honestly didn't like
butter all that much before trying it, and now I use it in everything I can.
There's just something about how creamy and unusually flavorful it is.

~~~
kriro
Maybe it's all subjective but I am willing to pay a premium for Kerrygold
(Irish) because I read once that the cows are grass fed and am imagining the
butter tastes a lot better.

It's very interesting how much the price can fluctuate in the same store (50%)
so the margins are decent I suppose.

~~~
lucideer
> _I read once that the cows are grass fed_

I'm not ignorant to the way much livestock in the world is treated/fed/etc.
and I'm aware of the US corn lobby, for example. But coming from Ireland I'm
still constantly surprised at how unusual people seem to find grass-fed
cattle.

"Grass-fed" isn't a term we use / recognise here, because... it's implicit.
Kerrygold is the mass-produced, big-brand butter, and yes it is grass fed.
Just like everything else.

That said, this makes me curious about the other listed brands. I'm assuming
grass-fed is the norm (northern-?)Europe-wide, so most of the above (being
French???) should also be?

~~~
beagle3
Unfortunately, Israel perfected milk yield a few decades ago; at the time,
Israel was something like 10 times the world average, now it’s less than five
but mostly because other big producers like Denmark adopted Israeli knowledge,
and the world average went up.

It does not involve hormones, but it does involve afaik a very specific
feeding regime, both times and content - and the content has no grass.

The resulting milk, as you would expect, is similar to making love in a canoe.

Americans, on the other hand, perfects cheap meat yield. That involves feeding
corn to cows, not grass.

A Canadian guy I met once, who grew up on a farm, said their cows were grass
fed but a few weeks before slaughter, they would switch the feed to corn,
because that way the meat tastes less grassy - making it excellent quality
(because grass) and excellent flavor (because no grass). Wouldn’t know myself
being vegetarian for a few decades now.

~~~
lucideer
Question is, given this thread is somewhat focused on the "premium" niche,
which country has "perfected" dairy at a broader agricultural level (rather
than the focus here on individual company/brand level)

Japan seems to be generally good at doing this sort of thing (taking a premium
product and trying to improve scientifically), see e.g. whisky, wagyu, etc.
but as far as I've heard they primarily import dairy.

~~~
johncalvinyoung
I don't know about perfection, but as an American coming from a not-
particularly-dairy-country state yet loving milk and cheese, Great Britain and
Ireland delighted me. When I lived there I was pleasantly surprised just how
good commodity milk and cheese was, not to mention specialty sources.

And at the same time how sad most of the meat was relative to US standards.

------
jandrewrogers
Butter quality varies widely around the world and within countries. The
distance from very good to very poor quality butter in terms of the eating
experience is incredibly large. Very good butter is unreasonably delicious and
addictive, it is a completely different food product compared to the poor
quality equivalent. I wouldn't pay an order of magnitude more for the world's
best butter, because great butter doesn't need to cost that much, but I would
definitely pay an integer factor more for excellent butter versus terrible
butter.

That said, I've been able to find great butter in most ethnically European
countries. It requires a bit of effort in some locales but it is usually
available if you know where to look.

~~~
porknubbins
Is this butter is one of those things like really high quality olive oil where
its only worth it for eating in its natural state because cooking with it
destroys the fine qualities that make it worth it? I love butter but haven’t
managed to find anything mind blowing so went back to commodity butter because
90% of the time I cook with it.

~~~
samatman
To my taste, Kerrygold is genuinely better: color, flavor, texture, and
quality of the Maillard reaction in fried foods.

That's most of what I get, I've picked up other butters that have the same
shade and haven't been disappointed.

~~~
grenoire
Kerrygold is not expensive enough that I feel bad about using it to toast my
hamburger buns. I also vouch for that, delicious (yet not _incredible_ ).

~~~
ido
I wasn't aware it's particularly fancy, as you can get it even in discount
supermarkets here (Germany) - it costs a bit more than the house brand butter
but not by much (I think KG is something like €2-something for 250g).

~~~
johncalvinyoung
In the USA, it's usually available at 100% markup over domestic commodity
butter. Not terribly expensive, honestly, but the most expensive butter
available in many supermarkets, and it's only been widely available in the
last 3-5 years. And sadly I suspect the US-market Kerrygold is a slightly
different formulation/recipe than I remember getting in the UK.

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bryanrasmussen
I'm from Denmark, but emigrated at an early age to the U.S, I always hated
butter until I came back to Denmark, so if you had asked me 20 years ago I
would have said hell no, but now I have managed to taste some really good
butters and maybe it is worth that much, just like a good cheese would be.

~~~
mettamage
I'm basing this of San Francisco (I haven't been anywhere else). Presuming
that SF is representative for the US, then IMO: tap water, milk, butter, bread
and cheese in the US isn't that great. For me those things are what I
basically live off every morning. The US has other things that are up to par
or better than stuff in European countries, but those 5 things aren't that
great unfortunately.

US people have complained about a lot of things where I lived when it comes to
food, but not those five.

~~~
jandrewrogers
Tap water in Bay Area is terrible, but that is geologically dependent.
California tap water generally is the worst I have tasted anywhere in the US.
Tap water in the Pacific Northwest, for example, is delicious, clean, and
usually lacks any chemical flavor. It is like drinking out of an alpine
spring, which is pretty close to the reality.

Cheese is a case-by-case basis, the US produces some very good and unique
proper cheeses. But I would give the edge to Europe. I would also agree that
the default quality of butter is higher in much of Europe, though similar
quality is produced in the US if you want it.

Bread is largely done better in the US in 2020. There was a time when that was
most assuredly not the case, but it seems to be consistently the case today. I
spend a large part of my life in Europe and the bread quality is not what I am
used to in Seattle. Similar bread experiences exist in many other parts of the
US. American bread has become remarkably good over the last few decades.

~~~
rootusrootus
> Tap water in the Pacific Northwest

It can vary a fair bit, but I agree. Some places in the PNW get river water
that is great, but then there's Portland, which draws from Bull Run, and
that's really some great water right there.

For cheese produced on industrial scale, we even have a good source for that
-- Tillamook cheese is pretty good.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
If we're going to talk about the quality of river water then we should let
Mark Twain have his say (from Life on the Mississippi):

"...and then they got to talking about differences betwixt ...clear-water
rivers and muddy-water ones. The man they called Ed said the muddy Mississippi
water was wholesomer to drink than the clear water of the Ohio; he said if you
let a pint of this yaller Mississippi water settle, you would have about a
half to three- quarters of an inch of mud in the bottom, according to the
stage of the river, and then it warn't no better than Ohio water - what you
wanted to do was to keep it stirred up - and when the river was low, keep mud
on hand to put in and thicken the water up the way it ought to be.

The Child of Calamity said that was so; he said there was nutritiousness in
the mud, and a man that drunk Mississippi water could grow corn in his stomach
if he wanted to. He says:

"You look at the graveyards; that tells the tale. Trees won't grow worth
shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard, but in a Sent Louis graveyard they grow
upwards of eight hundred foot high. It's all on account of the water the
people drunk before they laid up. A Cincinnati corpse don't richen a soil
any."

And they talked about how Ohio water didn't like to mix with Mississippi
water. Ed said if you take the Mississippi on a rise when the Ohio is low,
you'll find a wide band of clear water all the way down the east side of the
Mississippi for a hundred mile or more, and the minute you get out a quarter
of a mile from shore and pass the line, it is all thick and yaller the rest of
the way across."

------
OldHand2018
I had this butter once at a restaurant not long after this article was
originally published. I was excited to try it and while the color was indeed
distinctive, just as the photos show, I did not notice it being noticeably
better than other nice butters you get at very good restaurants (this
particular one had 2 Michelin stars).

If they say it's the world's best, I'll believe them. I definitely do not have
the most refined palate. I love the smell of great coffee but don't really
taste the difference.

------
pantulis
Getting the experience of tasting the best butter in the WORLD for 50
dollars/pound? Of course.

Would I be having it every day? Of course not.

------
somberi
A related read about how an Irish Dairy company conquered the discerning
butter segment:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-02/how-
irish...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-02/how-irish-butter-
kerrygold-conquered-america-s-kitchens)

------
m0zg
We need double blind studies to see if it is. My prediction: nobody will be
able to tell if it's $50 or $5 a pound, same as most people can't tell if
they're drinking red wine or white wine with red food coloring, or tell apart
an audiophile speaker cable and a wire coat hanger.

~~~
AdrianB1
I may be able to make a difference on butter (I used to manufacture my own
dairy, my grandparents had a small cow farm), but I can distinguish wine.
Nobody can distinguish audio by the type of cable unless you use a defective
or extremely thin cable, so the wire coat hanger test is not needed.

~~~
paulcole
Don’t you think an audiophile is going to claim that they can tell between
cables but might not believe anybody can tell wines apart?

~~~
buckminster
There is a difference though. Some people really can taste wine blind and tell
you, for example, what grape was used and where it was grown. A relative of
mine with this skill used to win wine tasting competitions. But nobody can
distinguish expensive speaker cables in blind trials.

------
blue_devil
I'm for buying slightly more expensive butter if that would incentivize
breeding cows for milk rather than meat. Butter still being more of a small
treat than main source of fats.

~~~
maddy237
In case you didn't know:

[https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-is-cruel/](https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-
is-cruel/)

~~~
BenjiWiebe
And living on a dairy farm, growing up in the dairy industry... I can tell you
that I have yet to see a "dairy is cruel" article that gets the facts right. I
suppose it's more "cruel" then just turning a cow loose on a huge pasture and
letting it live it's life, except for predators, illness, drought, poor diet
causing intestinal distress, etc that doesn't happen on a dairy farm.

~~~
maddy237
Yes, the problem started when humans decided to domesticate animals during the
agricultural revolution. Since then all farm animals exist because we bring
them into existence for our convenience.

All sentient beings should have at least one right: the right not to be
treated as property.

If we took animals seriously, we would stop treating them as our resources, as
our property. But that would mean an end to bringing nonhumans into existence
so that we can use them for food, clothing, vivisection, or any other purpose.

It's been scientifically proven that we don't need animal products to be
healthy, so humans are basically exploiting animals for no better reason than
palate pleasure. And to top it off animal agriculture is having a horrific
impact on the environment.

We can live without participating in the exploitation of the vulnerable.

We can live without destroying the environment.

We can live in a way that guarantees a more healthy life.

------
AlisdairO
For anyone living in Canada (which has a serious lack of quality dairy
products), I'd heartily recommend Emerald Grasslands butter. It's superb.
Grass fed, Jersey cows, fantastic flavour.

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dlkf
Butteridge's law of headlines

~~~
onion2k
It makes me sad that your comment was downvoted. HN needs more fun.

~~~
oska
It really doesn't. Not punning wordplay fun anyway.

------
tmaly
I would definitely try it once if I could get my hands on a pound.

I have been cooking more with the lockdown.

------
hoseja
Relevant SMBC [https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/milk](https://www.smbc-
comics.com/comic/milk)

~~~
war1025
> Let it sit out until it smells like dead feet

I watched some cooking show on Netflix a few years ago where someone mentioned
good cheese smelling like "the feet of God."

Odd thing is, when I trim my toenails these days, they do definitely have some
sort of cheddar smell to them.

I guess it makes sense in a way...

------
0xff00ffee
"Dandelion-yellow and uncommonly expensive, St. Clair's butter is served at
Thomas Keller's restaurants and is only available once a year to consumers."

On the one hand, reading about this article makes me drool.

On the other, it generates such bullshit highbrow scarcity that it makes me
hate haute cuisine.

....I'll take my my first world problem.

------
dash2
"No, it isn't."

There ya go.

------
paypalcust83
Why not just hydroponically grow excellent grass feed at scale for milk cows
for making good butter and destroy that market?

It seems like a problem that can be cracked with comparative plant tissue
analysis and replicated by proper plant lighting and nutrition schedules.

~~~
fyfy18
Or just let cows graze in fields? You don't even need to harvest the grass
then.

------
taylorlunt
Thus begins the decline of hacker news into mainstream clickbait. Mark my
words.

~~~
Neil44
It’s time for another Erlang purge.

~~~
odyssey7
Erlang purge?

~~~
Neil44
Back in approx 2008-2009 there was an effort to drive away a new more reddit-y
crowd by flooding the front page with Erlang articles, it seemed to work for a
while :)

------
seanwilson
Alternatively, consider plant based butter if you're concerned about climate
change and don't want to support industrial animal farming (i.e. same
reasoning behind plant based burgers which seem popular on here: make the
product directly from plants instead of inefficiently feeding plants to cows
first):

[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225411135_Comparati...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225411135_Comparative_life_cycle_assessment_of_margarine_and_butter_consumed_in_the_UK_Germany_and_France)

> The margarine products analysed here are more environmentally favourable
> than the butter products. In all three markets (UK, DE and FR) the margarine
> products are significantly better than the butter products for the
> categories global warming potential,eutrophication potential and
> acidification potential

~~~
ReptileMan
Margarine tastes like shit. If you want some plant based fats for spreading -
just make mayo. Takes 5 minutes.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Mayo has egg

~~~
triceratops
Doesn't need to. Veganaise tastes pretty good - I genuinely can't tell the
difference.

~~~
sorryitstrue
ah but he said mayo. its a protected term and must have egg!

~~~
aaronblohowiak
Fun story about this: [http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-
manyon...](http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-manyonnaise-
yet-still.html)

