Last fall, I enjoyed a memorable meal at Eleven Madison Park. I would be hard pressed to tell you what I had for breakfast, but I can remember every last detail of that meal, right down to the butter. In part, that may have been because the server made a ceremony of presenting it and pointing out that it was unsalted butter from Vermont. I can't deny that it was good. In fact, it was very, very good. But I would have been more impressed if it had been made in-house.
I distinctly remember wondering, as I ate the olive-studded baguette spread with the very, very good butter, why restaurants aren't making their own butter for table service. It seems a missed opportunity for customization and bragging rights.
Is it cost, time, labor, skill? The cost is on or below par to an artisanal butter and the time and labor are negligible. Making butter is such a basic skill that a five-year-old can produce an excellent product from fresh cream, a jar, and some elbow grease. Anyone who has ever over-whipped cream (raising hand) has unwittingly made butter. What is often viewed as a disaster is, in fact, a small, everyday miracle.
Butter is essentially the fat of the milk. It is an water-in-oil emulsion, composed of 80-82 percent milk fat, 16-17 percent water, and 1-2 percent milk solids. Transforming milk into butter will take place faster and the the yield will be higher if you start with fresh, pasteurized (preferably raw, but not ultra pasteurized) heavy cream. Agitation, whether in a jar (15 minutes of constant shaking), or in a food processor (30-60 seconds), incorporates air, forms bubbles, then fat globules collect in the bubble walls. At this point, whipped cream--a light, stable foam-- is formed. If agitation continues, the friction warms and softens the fat globules to a near-liquid state, causing the walls to rupture and the fat globules to cling together, forming larger and larger masses. Knowing this is not necessary to make butter--the miracle will still happen.
After churning, the buttermilk is drained off. This buttermilk is the real deal--light, tangy, refreshing--and to some, the reward of churning your own butter. Ice water is then added to the fat crystals and they are worked together with a paddle or spatula until they are creamy and homogenized.
Making butter is rewarding to those of us who are thrilled by watching matter transform from one state to another, but anyone would be won over by the flavor of freshly-formed, sweet butter. In her new book "Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through The Ages", culinary historian Anne Mendelson describes the taste of homemade butter as " the taste of cream to the nth power, cream newly translated to some rarefied spiritual afterlife." Chemically, the flavor of butter is comprised of over 120 different aroma compounds that include: fatty acids, lactones, methyl ketones, diacetyl, and dimethyl sulfide.
Aside from the inherent flavors in butter, fat has long been recognized as a flavor carrier; a vehicle to deliver whatever flavors and aromas that are put in contact with it. This is why butter is wrapped and isolated in its own compartment in storage. But this capacity to absorb can be seen as an opportunity to infuse flavor. Truffles are often buried in porous foods such as rice or eggs to infuse them with their aroma--why not store them with butter? Or other aromatics: citrus, herbs, porcini, cheese, coffee, chocolate, vanilla beans? Can garlic butter be made more efficiently by storing cut garlic cloves in a closed container with butter? Similarly, a compound butter is made by blending a flavorful or aromatic ingredient into finished butter, but this can sometimes interrupt the texture. What if flavor was introduced into the cream before churning it into butter? The infusion would have to take place at a temperature below pasteurization (185F/85C in the US) or through cold vacuum infusion. One final interesting developement with fat is that it is being studied as the sixth taste, although the actual receptors are still undiscovered.
I've made butter many times (some times, on purpose), but this is my first attempt at cultured butter, which is simply cream that has been soured (with buttermilk) and allowed to ferment or "ripen" at room temperature prior to ageing in the refrigerator. As with all fermentation, bacterial action develops acids and aroma compounds. One in particular, diacetyl, when superimposed with the compounds already present in fresh butter creates a noticeably fuller flavor that carries over into the buttermilk, which is the thickest, richest, and most flavorful that I have ever tasted. If you can resist drinking it all or turning it into amazing biscuits, it can be frozen to ripen the next batch of cultured butter.
ripening & ageing
churning
washing & creaming
Recipe: Cultured butter
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