Reader Rosanne has an interesting question:
I only just discovered the joy of cultured butter and that’s all I use now when I want to actually taste the butter. This week, however, I am at my sister’s and she volunteered for an event where she made 200 butter cookies so she bought her butter at Costco’s. As we were beating the butter to lightness, we both noticed how “buttery” it smelled – I had an “a-ha!” moment and realized it smelled like movie-theatre popcorn butter! We debated for a bit about why it would smell so buttery until I pulled the package out of the trash to check the ingredients. Lo and behold! Natural Flavorings! She also had another super-market brand and it, too, had Natural Flavorings on the list! Really? In butter? Is the cream so flat that we have to enhance the flavor of butter, too? I can’t believe that is what the American people are demanding these days…Where and what does this so-called Natural Flavoring of butter come from?
Great nose, Rosanne! You did indeed crack something: many American mass-market butters, especially unsalted butters, contain “natural flavors.” What are these mysterious things? They actually aren’t very mysterious at all, at least if you’re into fermentation: diacetyl, acetic acid, acetoin, ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, 2-butanone and others. The typical brew of compounds that bacteria such as Streptococcus lactis, Streptococcus cremoris, Streptococcus lactis diacetylactis and Leuconostoc citrovorum create as they digest sugars.
It all sounds like stuff that runs off a parking lot in a rain storm, but in fact these naturally-occurring chemicals are what give fermented foods – from beer to bread to yogurt and pickles – their flavor. Depending on the proportion in which they’re delivered, they can taste tangy, flowery, bitter, gamey or…buttery.
So the real question is not “are they bad for me” but “are they really necessary?” Apparently many butter makers think they are, at least in their unsalted products, which don’t taste like much, at least as far as many consumers are concerned. So they add these compounds, which are often packaged together in a product called “starter distillate”, basically the stuff you find in a bread starter minus the live microbes, water and flour. They give mass produced American butters a flavor that’s roughly analogous to a European cultured butter, (a butter made with cream that’s been allowed to sour – ferment – a bit).
I already know the next question, and it makes sense: why not just make a cultured butter to begin with and skip the additive? I can think of a couple of reasons. First, because “sweet cream” butter – butter made with nothing but fresh, unsoured cream – has always been considered a premium product in the States. Second, that being the case, the infrastructure at major dairies is set up to produce it. Salted sweet cream butter accounts for over 85% of the butter sold in America, and most people are happy with it. The rest of us buy the unsalted stuff. In an effort to make it competitive in flavor with more expensive specialty or imported butters, manufacturers spike it with this starter culture distillate.
Do I like it? Good question. I buy decent quality (Land O’ Lakes) unsalted butter for day-to-day use around the house. It has starter distillate in it, and I’m fine with it for about $5 a pound. For pastry making I generally pay up for the imported cultured stuff, which can easily run me double the price. Each has its use, and each has a mixture of diacetyl, acetic acid, acetoin, ethyl formate, ethyl acetate, 2-butanone, etc. in it…some inherent and some added.
Now, you can find plenty of food blogs out there whose owners are righteously pounding the table with outrage over “additives” in their butter. To them I would say: why not stifle the indignation for a bit and go find out what the additive is, how much of it there is, where it comes from and what its function is? We foodies pride ourselves on our “knowledge of the food we eat”, but very often the desire for knowledge only goes so far. Knowing and understanding the tools and technologies that go into our food system is just as important as knowing what’s good and what’s not. But that’s an old drum here at joepastry.com. I won’t beat it anymore today!
Thanks, Rosanne for asking a great question and providing a platform for me to express a little indignation of my own. It’s gonna be a good day, I can tell!
You can add me to the list of those happy with American style butter. I like it’s slightly salty, slightly sweet, mild flavor with whatever culturing additives it uses. European cultured butter tastes like cheese to me and the flavor overwhelms my pie crust and butter cookies…not in a good way for my taste. If a recipe calls for or would be improved by, a higher fat content, I’ll sub in some shortening for the butter called for. (I don’t care for lard either, as it’s flavor is too meaty and the mouth feel too fatty for my taste). I guess I’ve been indoctrinated by the American Dairy Board to be satisfied with it’s product. I’m okay with that, it’s good stuff. Also, almost all of American recipes that use butter have been formulated using American butter, so they work with it just fine.
It’s all about what you grow up with I think, Susan. And anyway, sweet cream butter is good stuff! Thanks for the comment,
- Joe
I have to differ humbly – I think European and English butter are muuuuuch better
I’m not so concerned about the health issue here, but I feel that the flavour of naturally cultured butter is really incomparable.
Objectively speaking, Henry, I think you’re correct. But who can afford to use that stuff every day???
- Joe
$5 a pound! That’s what I would pay for extra-fine AOC butter in France.
For basic, everyday butter, I pay €2.60/$3.40 at the most… and there’s plenty to choose from in between these extremes… all without additives
not sure if I can add a link, but this should give an idea of the choice and prices in a fairly average French supermarket (remove the spaces where needed):
http : // fd3-www.leclercdrive.fr / 011501 / courses / pgeWMEL009_Courses.aspx#FS284379
It might be a little less than that this week, but yes, butter is expensive here. Nice to know there’s another benefit of living in France!
Thanks Claudine!
- Joe
That is really interesting. I have been wondering about the prices of dairy in Europe. The public in New Zealand have been complaining bitterly that dairy (specifically milk) is too expensive and it can be bought cheaper in other countries. Our milk prices are actually dictated by world market prices, as we have to pay the same price that Fonterra gets for exported milk.
But I have noticed that European farmers say thay can’t make a living milking cows. Our butter is usually about NZ$5 (US$4) for 500g (~1 pound), but can be bought for ~ NZ$3.50 on special. Yesterday I paid $5 for 250g of local “boutique” cultured butter.
It is indeed true that European farmers barely can make a living from just milking cows. Here in the Netherlands milk farmers are either very big, or they start another business together with the milk cows, like selling ice to tourists or making cheese or having handicapped people on the farm to help/give them daytime activities. For ecological milk the prices are higher, but the switch to ecological is very expensive too.
But the prices for dairy are insanely low over here. I can get 250 gram basic everyday butter for prices between €0,85 and € 1,20. Lurpak (200 gram) is at the moment €1,70, but I really don’t think it is worth the higher price, it has only a little more taste than the basic butter I buy. If I bake something in which butter is an important flavour, I get ecological butter which is made from milk that is from cows that mainly ate grass and is lovely soft and flavoursome. This usually costs €2,00-3,00.
A liter pack of milk costs me €0,80-1,00. Farmers get 33-35 cents per liter at the moment in the Netherlands, this is an average price in Europe. The same chart of the Dutch LTO shows me that in NZ Fonterra pays about 28 eurocents per liter and farmers in the US get about 33 eurocents per liter milk. So it is not the prices of the milk that make the difference…
Very interesting, Ena. Thank you!
- Joe
We pay about $2.50 (€1.60) per litre of milk, but can get it at 4 litres for $7 on special. So yes, yours is much cheaper.
Our milk and butter are all from cows that mostly eat grass, however. We don’t have indoor dairy farming yet, and hopefully never will.
You have to remember that Fonterra is a cooperative owned by the farmers. They are paid out per kg milk solids provided by each farmer, but the farmers also own the company and get dividend profits from it.
The amount paid out also fluctuates hugely, as the price is set on the world market and reflects not only the fluctuating price of milk products but also the fluctuations of the exchange rate. In recent years it has fluctuated between ~$8/kg and ~$5/kg. Don’t ask me how many grams of milk solids there are in a litre of milk.
I imagine, though, that the average dairy farm here would be considered “very big” by European standards. Wikipedia tells me that the average New Zealand dairy farmer milks 500 cows. Embarrassing that I had to look it up!
Aloha Joe,
Mahalo for the butter treatise. I live a half-mile down a dirt road on the Big Island of Hawaii, and, yes, lava is dripping into the ocean as I write. My butter comes from Costco. T-G! We do what we can do. For 9 years, my only oven has been a Wolf Microwave Convection Oven. During Hanukkah I get into a baking/cooking frenzy. This year, I’m using your recipes for blintzes and biscotti, They are the best for me in this climate.
Mahalo nui loa,
Barbara
Someday, Barbara, I’m going to see a show like that. I’ve always wanted to, so don’t go appeasing the Kilauean gods before I can get there. But thanks very much for the note and please let me know how everything turns out!
- Joe
Thanks for the thorough reply, Joe! Truth be told, it was my sister’s super sensitive nose that picked up the intense buttery smell over the mixer. Natural or no, I find I am still uncomfortable with the additive in my butter. I felt the same when the news came out about the orange “scents” used in commercial juices – offended, disillusioned, dismayed, but not really surprised. I will be sticking to my cultured butters as much as possible and leave the ‘natural flavors’ for others…I happen to like Organic Valley European style cultured butter which comes in foil wrapped half pound blocks. I could that butter by the spoonful!
I do understand that, Rosanne. My main interest was in explaining what the additives are. You don’t have to like’em and you certainly don’t have to buy’em. Cultured butter is a wonderful thing! And yeah, that Organic Valley butter is great.
Cheers and thanks,
- Joe
Huh. . .I ran, just now to go check out my butters — Darigold (“local” WA State) salted butter is just cream & salt; Home Dairies (WA State) Unsalted – cream & nat’l flavors; Tillamook Salted – cream & salt; Tillamook Unsalted – cream & nat’l flavors. Veerry interesting! Usually what I’m more concerned with is the amount of butter-fat. I feel anything under 35-36% isn’t any good (had a bad experience with “evil” butter when I owned a bakery!). And you pay $5 for your butter?!? Even at it’s most expensive, Tillamook (higher grade 38% fat) never goes over $4.30/lb. and during the holidays it will drop down to about $2.50 – 3/lb which is when I start to hoard!
Thanks for the fun and informative post!
Ha! I may have overestimated a little (I checked the grocery store yesterday and Land O’Lakes unsalted was $4.35 a pound…it really depends on the week). And Tillamook is great stuff, by the way. Their cheddar cheese is legendary here in the Midwest, and their huckleberry ice cream is my all-time favorite ice cream. I’d move to the West Coast just for that!
But yes, it’s the unsalted butters where you typically get the flavoring. Interesting indeed!
Cheers,
- Joe
Very interesting discussion, Joe, and of course it prompted me to go check my butter as well! The cheap, cheap, cheap no-name stuff that I buy on sale at $3/lb (in Canada) contains nothing more than pasteurized cream, and “may contain” colour, I presume depending on the cows’ diet over the course of the year. I also have some Lactantia that bills itself as “antique” cultured butter; Lactantia is the high-end for grocery store butter here, and it contains just cream and lactic cultures. There’s a history of strict labelling and content regulations for certain dairy products in Canada, including a constitutional fight over the status of margarine (yep, I’m serious!), so I wonder if that’s why our butter doesn’t seem to have anything added to it.
Your post reminds me of an article I read a year or two ago on a major news site, I think in the US. The columnist was aghast at the long list of ingredients in McDonald’s newly-launched “creamy oatmeal,” and complained about fast food companies messing with food. She specifically zoned in on the number of additives in the “cream” portion of the ingredient-list. I thought to myself that it seemed strange that McDonald’s would bother messing with the cream, given that it probably comes from another supplier, so I went over to my fridge and pulled out the half-and-half and whipping cream in there. Sure enough, the ingredient list on my whipping cream was identical to the McDonald’s list, and that was also the first time that I realized that it was UHT; it’s sold in the cooler section, so I always assumed it was fresh! The half-and-half ingredient list was shorter, but still had a number of additives despite not being UHT.
Anyway, all that was simply to say that the columnist was assuming the worst about particular companies clearly without actually knowing what she would be consuming if she made her own oatmeal with cream from scratch!
funny – I have both LoL & the generic stuff in the fridge at the moment. The cheapy stuff has no additives! I’ll have compare the aroma when I use them.
Thanks for the discussion though – I never knew about the additives
Reading this blogs makes me feel more “jealous” about the fact that butter is readily available to American bakers, either salted or unsalted, flavored or cultured.
Here in Nigeria, we only have access to Margarine. It comes in sachet up to 10kg-15kg buckets for large bakeries. Even with this lack, the margarine vary in taste, flavor, baking properties/qualities and price.
The fat content is 80% and a general word they use on them is…”good for cooking and baking”.
Additives can be used to improve the shelf life or imitate the qualities of what could be obtained naturally. Take for instance, UHT cream, etc. As long as the additives are not contributing negatively to LDL and HDL levels in the body, I think they are welcomed.
Thank you for your perspective on this, Taiwo. We here in the States (and other places) forget how spoiled we are when it comes to groceries like butter. Still your work doesn’t seem to suffer from it. Your cakes are gorgeous!
- Joe
Reading your post I was really surprised to hear about additives. I volunteer with a food allergy support group and I have had to be obsessive about label reading. I’ve never seen anything like that except in “butter flavor Crisco” and the various dairy-free and diary-and-soy-free margarines. I presume it is also the primary ingredient in those bottles of (shudder) “butter flavoring”. It is indeed a very artificial taste to some of us.
Since butter is on sale these days I’m stocking up so I have in front of me four brands: Kirkland (Costco), Hotel Bar, Shoprite, and Land O’ Lakes. Note that they are all *salted* versions but the ingredients list on all of them reads: cream and salt
So when it comes to Costco’s butter either it’s a regional thing or the salted version is additive-free. Worth knowing if the additive bothers you and you can’t afford the good stuff.
Hey Laura! In this case especially, one person’s ingredient is another’s additive, and for my part I don’t really see this as such. It’s like adding starter to a bread mix…something that would already be there had the dough been allowed to ferment a little longer (like more expensive butters). But yes, it’s only salted butters that have the starter distillate, to give them some flavor.
Cheers,
- Joe
I have both salted and unsalted Kirkland butter in the fridge because I use unsalted for baking. It’s only the unsalted that lists ‘natural flavorings’. But I think that’s what you meant to say in your last post as that’s what you said further up several times.
Hey Sandi!
Yep, it’s those unsalted mass-market butters that seem to need that little flavor boost. I guess!
- Joe
Doesn’t anyone buy butter at Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. I think they both sell a pound of butter for either 2.79 or 3.29. Cheaper than regular price at supermarkets. I stock up on premium European style butter whenever I can get it for $5 to $6 a pound. Which is fairly often at Whole Foods. It one of the only products that they regularly put on sale. Interesting to know the chemistry behind natural flavorings in butter. Thank you. I came to your site to look for a few Christmas cookie recipes. Your gingerbread house is beautiful! I hope the bid went much higher than $75.
I do too, Eileen!
Thanks very much for the comment — and the compliment! Come back soon!
- Joe