14 ms·

Is the world's best butter worth 50 dollars a pound? (2017)

135 points by emptybits 6y ago

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - selectodude 6y ago
    > Presuming that SF is representative for the US It's not.
    - mettamage 6y ago
      Is it better or worse regarding those 5 items?
      - Cerium 6y ago
        Many people regard SF as above average in water and bread. Water comes from Hetch Hetchy [1] and many of the regions best bakers are in SF, such as Acme [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Public_Utilities_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Public_Utilities... [2] http://acmebread.com/ http://acmebread.com/
        axaxs 6y ago
        How is SF considered above average in bread? Is it due to all the golden wheat fields rolling through Silicon Valley? I jest of course, but seriously, all regions have a ton of variety of breads and bakeries. Even tiny podunk towns you wouldn't know existed...
        ReptileMan 6y ago
        Probably has to do with san francisco sourdough.
        nrp 6y ago
        A long history with sourdough (hence Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, even though it didn't originate in California), and more recently a strong network of bakers and bakeries branching out from Chez Panisse starting in the 70's as noted in another comment.
      - davidgay 6y ago
        Far, far, better for bread and cheese at least. Which I suspect means you haven't found where those are? (Cheeseboard in Berkeley, Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building, Acme bread, Tartine as previously mentioned - some of these closed at the moment of course) [I'm a cheese and bread snob from Switzerland FWIW - I could be somewhat convinced that the wholewheat bread choices are not perfect though]
        aaronblohowiak 6y ago
        Do you know of a good pumpernickel here?
  - q845712 6y ago
    Of the things you listed, tap water is highly variable across the US; no city or region would be representative of the rest.
  - look_lookatme 6y ago
    The tap water in NYC is amazing. In two of the buildings I lived in there it was also the coldest tap water I’ve ever had. I sometimes make butter from raw milk, which available in h th he state I live in now. It is very good. Most of the time I just keep finlandia or kerrygold around. I cook with Cabot butter.
    - OldHand2018 6y ago
      New York City is very lucky in regards to its water supply, it mostly comes from the Catskills Mountains in upstate New York. They don't even have to filter it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...
    - oftenwrong 6y ago
      NYC's water is high quality, but the rooftop tanks that feed most faucets are not always maintained to an acceptable level of sanitation: https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/energy-environment/new-york-city-water-tank-hazards.html https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/energy-enviro...
  - kaonwarb 6y ago
    The tap water comment surprises me - I've found SF water to be quite good, presumably due to its (major) source in Hetch Hetchy [1]. This does not apply to other nearby cities, e.g. East Bay. [1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11674188/hetch-hetchy-waters-epic-journey-from-mountains-to-tap https://www.kqed.org/news/11674188/hetch-hetchy-waters-epic-...
    - adrianN 6y ago
      I could only drink filtered or boiled tap water when I was in the SF area. The chlorine taste is too strong.
      - xenihn 6y ago
        Were you actually in SF? I moved here from Southern California, and the tap water in both apartments I've lived in has been extremely drinkable straight out of the tap. No chlorine or mineral taste at all. I'd go so far as to compare it to NYC tap water.
        adrianN 6y ago
        I was in downtown SF and also had the same experience in San Mateo. The water dispensed at the airport is also pretty vile, after a transatlantic flight when the chlorine had time to disperse it actually smells like swamp water.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        A friend's place by Alamo Square had much better water than my former apartment closer to downtown.
        xenihn 6y ago
        I don't know then...everyone I've ever discussed it with has praised SF water. I'm really sensitive to the taste & smell of chlorine and minerals too. I don't know what could be responsible for the difference that you experienced.
        deleted 6y ago
  - yellow_postit 6y ago
    Tap water I can see assigning a city value to but milk and butter have so much brand variation from your corner store, to big box grocer, to farmers market that I fail to see how such a city wide generalization can be accurate.
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    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.
    - soperj 6y ago
      >California tap water generally is the worst I have tasted anywhere in the US Flint, MI probably has a thing or two to say...
      - RandallBrown 6y ago
        It was the lead pipes in Flint that were the problem, not really the water.
        greedo 6y ago
        And lead actually sweetens the taste of the water...
    - Cerium 6y ago
      The Bay Area is a mixed bag for tap water. Some of the East Bay has great tap water, while head down to San Jose and you can only get worse by driving much farther south.
    - Der_Einzige 6y ago
      I've lived in both the PNW and the Bay Area and I can't tell the difference between the water in each location. It's great in both locations (north bay, SF proper, or peninsula). I won't speak to the south bay though Having spent some time in Arizona, that's a place where the water quality and taste is horrible. You bay area folks don't know how good you have it.
  - creddit 6y ago
    Bread...? Tartine, Acme, Semifreddi’s are all fantastic and highly available in SF. The Bay Area, kicked off by Chez Panisse unsurprisingly, has developed a great bread culture
    - yumraj 6y ago
      Acme's sour batard is my favorite. Never had Tartine's.
      - boringg 6y ago
        Tartine's bread is good. Their ham and cheese croissant is next level by far the best savoury baked good I have had between Europe and North America. Every time I go back to have it I question if it can live up to my expectations. Every time it knocks them out of the park. I am already doubting that it will be that good when I go back to get it again...
      - creddit 6y ago
        I love Acme's Pain au Levain. It's my go to. Tartine's country loaf is great but its distribution is much more limited than Acme which I get at Whole Foods without a problem.
    - gwittel 6y ago
      If you like Tartine, you’ll probably like “the midwife and the baker”. For me, it’s a close call between the two (depends on the specific variety). You can get their stuff at some stores/farmers markets and the bakery itself in Mountain View (no storefront yet). Manresa is good too. But I find something missing from them vs the other two bakeries (nitpicking here though).
  - paypalcust83 6y ago
    You're conflating a lot of things with sweeping generalizations. And, I've lived in CA for 40+ years, and know where the proverbial bodies are buried. Bread, milk, cheese, and butter vary a lot, depending on where you get it and how it was produced. If you're lazy and only go to a corporate, generic supermarket, you're likely to only be able to buy inferior products or marginally-good products at high prices. If you go to farmers' markets, specialty, independent, Italian grocers, and other quality stores, you will have much better choices of superior products. Tap water in California ranges from acceptable to terrible. Sacramento and Davis are notoriously bad with very high mineral content (hardness). An ion exchange water softener is a luxury in some areas and essential in others. Also, a multi-stage carbon + RO filter is a requirement for drinking water anywhere due to chemicals including chloramines. Another common improvement is a whole-house carbon block filter to catch chloramines that can damage RO membranes and produce undesirable odors at all water use points. Rice from California should be avoided because it contains arsenic from the soil composition. As I don't completely trust the coffeemaker rice cooking method, it's better to get rice that's safer to consume in the first place.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      The point is that "every morning" general goods are of lower quality. i.e., the corporate, generic supermarket in Europe is better than the corporate, generic supermarket in the USA. I think this is a reasonable assertion, but there's significant regional variation between and within countries/states.
      - mettamage 6y ago
        Thanks for explaining my point, this is what I mean indeed. When I go to the super market and buy a random bread I can be rest assured it's of ok quality. When I go and buy a random bread in SF, I can be rest assured that it's sweet. To get anything acceptable, I had to buy higher quality stuff in SF (like French bread or imported cheese).
      - perl4ever 6y ago
        Generic supermarkets in the US often have widely varying product quality in the same store. For instance, you can buy various types of "parmesan", US made or ersatz or Kraft or whatever, probably some of it's sawdust, but every place I've been to also has genuine and expensive parmigiano reggiano, as well as US made parmesan that's aged and relatively good quality. Even specific brands will have different prices and quality, like for example the deli/produce section often has products sold by irregular weight that are better than the standardized packages elsewhere in the store.
  - peferron 6y ago
    I used to live in France and am now in the Bay Area. Here are a few products I like: - Milk: Straus non-homogenized organic whole milk - Butter: Kerrygold salted - Bread: Costco walnut raisin Have you tried these already? They're fairly easy to find and won't cost an arm and a leg. If they're not good enough, there's fancier stuff available, such as Rodolphe Le Meunier butter, or Backhaus bakery in San Mateo which makes great pains au chocolat. Cheese is still way behind for sure. There's too much variety and catching up will take decades. Local creameries seem mostly interested in making triple crème variations and establishing their brand. I'm sure some of them will be very successful this way, but from a consumer's perspective I don't think it will work out as well quality- and cost-wise as the French model of buying unbranded cheese from a specialized shop that hand-picks their regional suppliers.
    - e40 6y ago
      Another vote for Straus milk and Kerrygold butter. Regarding Straus, the difference between it and the second best is vast, for me. Nothing comes close.
  - jerzyt 6y ago
    >>> 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 one, SF is NOT representative of the US. In fact, one of the best places food-wise. However, of the five items you've listed, I'd agree with you on about 4.5. The SF's sourdough can compete with any sourdough, but an average village bakery in Europe beats it hands down on other varieties.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      The thing with bread in Europe is that, in many countries, you can get quite good bread at a random cafe or shop at a train station selling sandwiches. You can get extremely good bread in the US but you have to seek it out and I'm pretty sure it gets harder once you get out of major cities, especially on the coasts.
  - gbronner 6y ago
    Tap water varies by location, but also significantly by season. At least in the Northeast, the all the accumulated detritus (e.g. dog feces) from the winter gets flushed into the reservoirs in the spring, and the water districts tend to spike the chlorine levels to sterilize the higher bacterial loads. Apart from that, in NYC, we have three main reservoir systems, each with their own cleanliness and taste. When one is being worked on, the water taste can change significantly.
  - war1025 6y ago
    I live in Ames, IA (technically next town over now), and we have excellent tap water. To the point that someone created a website [1] to sell hats and shirts and such that just say "Ames Tap Water". It is objectively very good water. [1] https://www.amestapwater.com/ https://www.amestapwater.com/
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  The US produces some truly fabulous butter but you may not have had it. Industrial economy grade butter in the US can be quite poor, I don't like that either.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    That seems to be a common theme with all food in the US. The stuff normal people get in the supermarket is absolutely terrible, but there are some _artisan_ manufacturers that are actually good compared to the stuff from other countries.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      Which is pretty much my point, people get exposed to the low quality of the supermarkets in the U.S and think "I don't like that stuff" and as a consequence never try for the top quality.
      - ReptileMan 6y ago
        It is a marketing problem. I think that Alton Brown did wonders with promoting US artisanal products. On Good Eats he often pitched small high quality producers of various ingredients.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I think it’s cultural. Based on the lack of popularity of quality foods, I would say a large portion of people don’t care or can’t afford to care about cooking or high quality food. Although, that has changed a little bit in the last decade or so with “foodies” and taking pictures of your food/cooking becoming a thing. I remember being a kid, and going out to restaurants was not something we looked forward to as American restaurants were bland tasting with garlic (probably powdered crap) being the most exotic spice in the restaurant’s ingredients. Maybe it was different for richer people or in SF/NYC. And I will never understand the appeal of a diner.
      - 6y ago
- Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > 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. I had the same thing occur with wine, I'm from California but I went to Catholic school so wine to me was this forced ritual thing that tasted horribly. I even did a short in upscale catering while paying for University and still didn't 'get' wine despite tasting what I was told was 'good wine' all the time. I like(d) aged single malt whisky and vodka. But when I went to Italy and Croatia I learned how a cuisine can be entirely built around the seasons and that wine played a big part of its enhancement. I've had really good butters from Switzerland while doing my apprenticeship, not sure the costs but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the rate, and despite my affinity for comparing seasonal/aged cheeses (especially with fruit) I simply couldn't tell the difference. It made logical sense for the same reason it does in cheese, the grazing and vegetation/feed pattern varies, but my palette couldn't tell the difference in finding the 'lavender and wild flower notes' these artisan guys went on about. Then again, I'm more of a olive oil person anyway, and that easily exceeds $50/liter so I understood their is a market for that and just nodded. As a chef later in life I had the same experience as hearing the sommelier talk about 'after notes of butter scotch, and whiffs of toffy' when describing what I thought was a rather mediocre chardonnay during pre-service with food pairing once: a lot of is just branding, but I'm glad it exists as its a big part of restaurant sales. But I just shrugged it off, and never ordered it myself.
- garagemc2 6y ago
  Out of curiosity what is the reputation of Lurpak like in Denmark? It's top shelf butter in most mainstream supermarkets in the UK and Australia.
  - jb_s 6y ago
    Lurpak is pretty good for supermarket butter. But at least in Aus you can easily get more artisanal butter at the local deli or whatever. Pepe Saya is popular.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    2 stars out of 6 https://www.berlingske.dk/det-sunde-liv/test-her-er-det-bedste-smoer https://www.berlingske.dk/det-sunde-liv/test-her-er-det-beds... I guess I prefer Thise for daily butter use.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    What? No it isn't, it's bog standard commodity butter. (UK) It's marginally cheaper than Président, (3p/100g) and marginally more expensive than Country Life (5p/100g) on Ocado. Perhaps a better benchmark - Waitrose's own essentials one is 13p/100g cheaper, and Waitrose's 'Duchy Organic' is 1p/100g more expensive. i.e. it's in the range of everyday butters that people buy the same brand of every time because that's what they buy every time (because that's what they ...).
- yongjik 6y ago
  On the other end of the scale, when I grew up in Korea our cheese tasted like congealed mayo with food coloring, and our "ham" was made of ground fish and flour. I didn't know the taste of an actual ham until I went to America for studying. These days I think it's not as bad, though Korea's major beer brands are still all shit.
  - ido 6y ago
    Interesting that they save on ham by using fish! In Germany & Austria it's the opposite, pork is super cheap and fish is expensive (they don't use ground pork to fake fish products tho).
    - benibela 6y ago
      But they save on fish by mixing it with fluor (Fischstäbchen)
      - ido 6y ago
        Isn't that just battered (like schnitzel)? If you buy actual fish you get just fish.
        benibela 6y ago
        Yes, but when I checked the label, I was surprised how little fish there is. Only 65% fish Apparently that is the minimal amount of fish they can use and still call it Fischstäbchen
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    I think within the next decade, the beer will become much better. It was only recently any micro-brewing started.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I've had the same experience, but at home we usually had margarine or some other cheap butter replacement. My girlfriend insisted on getting real, salted butter and I have a newfound appreciation for it now.
jandrewrogers 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - jandrewrogers 6y ago
    Yes, this is typically butter that you eat directly for its own qualities. Like very good olive oil.
  - samatman 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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).
yumraj 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - yumraj 6y ago
    it's a strong smell, but I guess you love the smells you grow with. Even now sometimes I make Ghee at home with store bought organic butter, as it's difficult to find organic ghee. Unfortunately it doesn't smell the same.
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    As I understand it, there are a lot of strong smells (comparatively speaking) in an Indian kitchen
    - searchableguy 6y ago
      Even for me as an indian, it's a very strong smell.
    - balls187 6y ago
      Growing up with it doesn't always make it tolerable. My parents never made ghee (they're ethnic tamils from Malaysia), but good lord frying fish, or making fermented shrimp paste...yuck.
OldHand2018 6y ago
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.
taylorlunt 6y ago
Thus begins the decline of hacker news into mainstream clickbait. Mark my words.
- Neil44 6y ago
  It’s time for another Erlang purge.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    How did that work last time? I'd suggest a different topic anyway, like GC algorithms or binary exploitation.
  - odyssey7 6y ago
    Erlang purge?
    - Neil44 6y ago
      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 :)
m0zg 6y ago
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.
- Xcelerate 6y ago
  > We need double blind studies to see if it is. See my comment elsewhere in the thread; my wife and I did this (sample size of 2, but still...) There's definitely a difference between supermarket butter and "premium" butter — whether that's worth $50 is a matter of debate. I think the difference between butter brands is much more pronounced than differences between wine though.
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
- xutopia 6y ago
  I can taste and smell a difference between grass fed beef butter and cow feed (mixture of hay and corn usually). I've done so in blind tests before. My favorite butters are French cultured butters and I prefer salted over unsalted. The tanginess you get from culture elevates the taste of butter to a whole other level.
justlexi93 6y ago
Wow, is that for real? I feel like all-butter somehow taste the safe and I am not a fancy person.
Xcelerate 6y ago
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.
- swampthing 6y ago
  Interesting, I felt Échiré was more or less indistinguishable from Isigny Sainte-Mère, but that Rodolphe Le Meunier was in a league of its own.
- jjgreen 6y ago
  Échiré is fantastic, if a bit steep. It's fairly easy to get in Paris, and you can find it in London if you know where to look. Bizarrely, I've only ever seen the demi sel in London.
  - RandomBacon 6y ago
    I did a web search for "Échiré". First result was an Amazon product page at $25, second result was a gourmet food store at $8 for the same thing. both results were for 250g (half pound) of demi sel
- Talanes 6y ago
  I can vouch for that assessment of Clover. It has flavor, but not in a particularly pleasant way. I've had better luck with unrecognizable bargain brand premium butters.
seanwilson 6y ago
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_Comparative_life_cycle_assessment_of_margarine_and_butter_consumed_in_the_UK_Germany_and_France https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225411135_Comparati... > 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 6y ago
  Margarine tastes like shit. If you want some plant based fats for spreading - just make mayo. Takes 5 minutes.
  - aaronblohowiak 6y ago
    Mayo has egg
    - triceratops 6y ago
      Doesn't need to. Veganaise tastes pretty good - I genuinely can't tell the difference.
      - sorryitstrue 6y ago
        ah but he said mayo. its a protected term and must have egg!
        aaronblohowiak 6y ago
        Fun story about this: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-manyonnaise-yet-still.html http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-manyon...
tmaly 6y ago
I would definitely try it once if I could get my hands on a pound. I have been cooking more with the lockdown.
dash2 6y ago
"No, it isn't." There ya go.
paypalcust83 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Or just let cows graze in fields? You don't even need to harvest the grass then.
somberi 6y ago
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-butter-kerrygold-conquered-america-s-kitchens https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-02/how-irish...
pantulis 6y ago
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.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dlkf 6y ago
Butteridge's law of headlines
- onion2k 6y ago
  It makes me sad that your comment was downvoted. HN needs more fun.
  - oska 6y ago
    It really doesn't. Not punning wordplay fun anyway.
hoseja 6y ago
Relevant SMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/milk https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/milk
- war1025 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
"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.
AlisdairO 6y ago
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.
blue_devil 6y ago
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 6y ago
  In case you didn't know: https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-is-cruel/ https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-is-cruel/
  - BenjiWiebe 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.

135 points by emptybits 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- selectodude 6y ago
  > Presuming that SF is representative for the US It's not.
  - mettamage 6y ago
    Is it better or worse regarding those 5 items?
    - Cerium 6y ago
      Many people regard SF as above average in water and bread. Water comes from Hetch Hetchy [1] and many of the regions best bakers are in SF, such as Acme [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Public_Utilities_Commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Public_Utilities... [2] http://acmebread.com/ http://acmebread.com/
      - axaxs 6y ago
        How is SF considered above average in bread? Is it due to all the golden wheat fields rolling through Silicon Valley? I jest of course, but seriously, all regions have a ton of variety of breads and bakeries. Even tiny podunk towns you wouldn't know existed...
        ReptileMan 6y ago
        Probably has to do with san francisco sourdough.
        nrp 6y ago
        A long history with sourdough (hence Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, even though it didn't originate in California), and more recently a strong network of bakers and bakeries branching out from Chez Panisse starting in the 70's as noted in another comment.
    - davidgay 6y ago
      Far, far, better for bread and cheese at least. Which I suspect means you haven't found where those are? (Cheeseboard in Berkeley, Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building, Acme bread, Tartine as previously mentioned - some of these closed at the moment of course) [I'm a cheese and bread snob from Switzerland FWIW - I could be somewhat convinced that the wholewheat bread choices are not perfect though]
      - aaronblohowiak 6y ago
        Do you know of a good pumpernickel here?
- q845712 6y ago
  Of the things you listed, tap water is highly variable across the US; no city or region would be representative of the rest.
- look_lookatme 6y ago
  The tap water in NYC is amazing. In two of the buildings I lived in there it was also the coldest tap water I’ve ever had. I sometimes make butter from raw milk, which available in h th he state I live in now. It is very good. Most of the time I just keep finlandia or kerrygold around. I cook with Cabot butter.
  - OldHand2018 6y ago
    New York City is very lucky in regards to its water supply, it mostly comes from the Catskills Mountains in upstate New York. They don't even have to filter it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_water_supply_sys...
  - oftenwrong 6y ago
    NYC's water is high quality, but the rooftop tanks that feed most faucets are not always maintained to an acceptable level of sanitation: https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/energy-environment/new-york-city-water-tank-hazards.html https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/energy-enviro...
- kaonwarb 6y ago
  The tap water comment surprises me - I've found SF water to be quite good, presumably due to its (major) source in Hetch Hetchy [1]. This does not apply to other nearby cities, e.g. East Bay. [1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11674188/hetch-hetchy-waters-epic-journey-from-mountains-to-tap https://www.kqed.org/news/11674188/hetch-hetchy-waters-epic-...
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I could only drink filtered or boiled tap water when I was in the SF area. The chlorine taste is too strong.
    - xenihn 6y ago
      Were you actually in SF? I moved here from Southern California, and the tap water in both apartments I've lived in has been extremely drinkable straight out of the tap. No chlorine or mineral taste at all. I'd go so far as to compare it to NYC tap water.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        I was in downtown SF and also had the same experience in San Mateo. The water dispensed at the airport is also pretty vile, after a transatlantic flight when the chlorine had time to disperse it actually smells like swamp water.
        nitrogen 6y ago
        A friend's place by Alamo Square had much better water than my former apartment closer to downtown.
        xenihn 6y ago
        I don't know then...everyone I've ever discussed it with has praised SF water. I'm really sensitive to the taste & smell of chlorine and minerals too. I don't know what could be responsible for the difference that you experienced.
      - deleted 6y ago
- yellow_postit 6y ago
  Tap water I can see assigning a city value to but milk and butter have so much brand variation from your corner store, to big box grocer, to farmers market that I fail to see how such a city wide generalization can be accurate.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  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.
  - soperj 6y ago
    >California tap water generally is the worst I have tasted anywhere in the US Flint, MI probably has a thing or two to say...
    - RandallBrown 6y ago
      It was the lead pipes in Flint that were the problem, not really the water.
      - greedo 6y ago
        And lead actually sweetens the taste of the water...
  - Cerium 6y ago
    The Bay Area is a mixed bag for tap water. Some of the East Bay has great tap water, while head down to San Jose and you can only get worse by driving much farther south.
  - Der_Einzige 6y ago
    I've lived in both the PNW and the Bay Area and I can't tell the difference between the water in each location. It's great in both locations (north bay, SF proper, or peninsula). I won't speak to the south bay though Having spent some time in Arizona, that's a place where the water quality and taste is horrible. You bay area folks don't know how good you have it.
- creddit 6y ago
  Bread...? Tartine, Acme, Semifreddi’s are all fantastic and highly available in SF. The Bay Area, kicked off by Chez Panisse unsurprisingly, has developed a great bread culture
  - yumraj 6y ago
    Acme's sour batard is my favorite. Never had Tartine's.
    - boringg 6y ago
      Tartine's bread is good. Their ham and cheese croissant is next level by far the best savoury baked good I have had between Europe and North America. Every time I go back to have it I question if it can live up to my expectations. Every time it knocks them out of the park. I am already doubting that it will be that good when I go back to get it again...
    - creddit 6y ago
      I love Acme's Pain au Levain. It's my go to. Tartine's country loaf is great but its distribution is much more limited than Acme which I get at Whole Foods without a problem.
  - gwittel 6y ago
    If you like Tartine, you’ll probably like “the midwife and the baker”. For me, it’s a close call between the two (depends on the specific variety). You can get their stuff at some stores/farmers markets and the bakery itself in Mountain View (no storefront yet). Manresa is good too. But I find something missing from them vs the other two bakeries (nitpicking here though).
- paypalcust83 6y ago
  You're conflating a lot of things with sweeping generalizations. And, I've lived in CA for 40+ years, and know where the proverbial bodies are buried. Bread, milk, cheese, and butter vary a lot, depending on where you get it and how it was produced. If you're lazy and only go to a corporate, generic supermarket, you're likely to only be able to buy inferior products or marginally-good products at high prices. If you go to farmers' markets, specialty, independent, Italian grocers, and other quality stores, you will have much better choices of superior products. Tap water in California ranges from acceptable to terrible. Sacramento and Davis are notoriously bad with very high mineral content (hardness). An ion exchange water softener is a luxury in some areas and essential in others. Also, a multi-stage carbon + RO filter is a requirement for drinking water anywhere due to chemicals including chloramines. Another common improvement is a whole-house carbon block filter to catch chloramines that can damage RO membranes and produce undesirable odors at all water use points. Rice from California should be avoided because it contains arsenic from the soil composition. As I don't completely trust the coffeemaker rice cooking method, it's better to get rice that's safer to consume in the first place.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    The point is that "every morning" general goods are of lower quality. i.e., the corporate, generic supermarket in Europe is better than the corporate, generic supermarket in the USA. I think this is a reasonable assertion, but there's significant regional variation between and within countries/states.
    - mettamage 6y ago
      Thanks for explaining my point, this is what I mean indeed. When I go to the super market and buy a random bread I can be rest assured it's of ok quality. When I go and buy a random bread in SF, I can be rest assured that it's sweet. To get anything acceptable, I had to buy higher quality stuff in SF (like French bread or imported cheese).
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      Generic supermarkets in the US often have widely varying product quality in the same store. For instance, you can buy various types of "parmesan", US made or ersatz or Kraft or whatever, probably some of it's sawdust, but every place I've been to also has genuine and expensive parmigiano reggiano, as well as US made parmesan that's aged and relatively good quality. Even specific brands will have different prices and quality, like for example the deli/produce section often has products sold by irregular weight that are better than the standardized packages elsewhere in the store.
- peferron 6y ago
  I used to live in France and am now in the Bay Area. Here are a few products I like: - Milk: Straus non-homogenized organic whole milk - Butter: Kerrygold salted - Bread: Costco walnut raisin Have you tried these already? They're fairly easy to find and won't cost an arm and a leg. If they're not good enough, there's fancier stuff available, such as Rodolphe Le Meunier butter, or Backhaus bakery in San Mateo which makes great pains au chocolat. Cheese is still way behind for sure. There's too much variety and catching up will take decades. Local creameries seem mostly interested in making triple crème variations and establishing their brand. I'm sure some of them will be very successful this way, but from a consumer's perspective I don't think it will work out as well quality- and cost-wise as the French model of buying unbranded cheese from a specialized shop that hand-picks their regional suppliers.
  - e40 6y ago
    Another vote for Straus milk and Kerrygold butter. Regarding Straus, the difference between it and the second best is vast, for me. Nothing comes close.
- jerzyt 6y ago
  >>> 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 one, SF is NOT representative of the US. In fact, one of the best places food-wise. However, of the five items you've listed, I'd agree with you on about 4.5. The SF's sourdough can compete with any sourdough, but an average village bakery in Europe beats it hands down on other varieties.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    The thing with bread in Europe is that, in many countries, you can get quite good bread at a random cafe or shop at a train station selling sandwiches. You can get extremely good bread in the US but you have to seek it out and I'm pretty sure it gets harder once you get out of major cities, especially on the coasts.
- gbronner 6y ago
  Tap water varies by location, but also significantly by season. At least in the Northeast, the all the accumulated detritus (e.g. dog feces) from the winter gets flushed into the reservoirs in the spring, and the water districts tend to spike the chlorine levels to sterilize the higher bacterial loads. Apart from that, in NYC, we have three main reservoir systems, each with their own cleanliness and taste. When one is being worked on, the water taste can change significantly.
- war1025 6y ago
  I live in Ames, IA (technically next town over now), and we have excellent tap water. To the point that someone created a website [1] to sell hats and shirts and such that just say "Ames Tap Water". It is objectively very good water. [1] https://www.amestapwater.com/ https://www.amestapwater.com/
jandrewrogers 6y ago
The US produces some truly fabulous butter but you may not have had it. Industrial economy grade butter in the US can be quite poor, I don't like that either.
- adrianN 6y ago
  That seems to be a common theme with all food in the US. The stuff normal people get in the supermarket is absolutely terrible, but there are some _artisan_ manufacturers that are actually good compared to the stuff from other countries.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    Which is pretty much my point, people get exposed to the low quality of the supermarkets in the U.S and think "I don't like that stuff" and as a consequence never try for the top quality.
    - ReptileMan 6y ago
      It is a marketing problem. I think that Alton Brown did wonders with promoting US artisanal products. On Good Eats he often pitched small high quality producers of various ingredients.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        I think it’s cultural. Based on the lack of popularity of quality foods, I would say a large portion of people don’t care or can’t afford to care about cooking or high quality food. Although, that has changed a little bit in the last decade or so with “foodies” and taking pictures of your food/cooking becoming a thing. I remember being a kid, and going out to restaurants was not something we looked forward to as American restaurants were bland tasting with garlic (probably powdered crap) being the most exotic spice in the restaurant’s ingredients. Maybe it was different for richer people or in SF/NYC. And I will never understand the appeal of a diner.
    - 6y ago
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> 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. I had the same thing occur with wine, I'm from California but I went to Catholic school so wine to me was this forced ritual thing that tasted horribly. I even did a short in upscale catering while paying for University and still didn't 'get' wine despite tasting what I was told was 'good wine' all the time. I like(d) aged single malt whisky and vodka. But when I went to Italy and Croatia I learned how a cuisine can be entirely built around the seasons and that wine played a big part of its enhancement. I've had really good butters from Switzerland while doing my apprenticeship, not sure the costs but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the rate, and despite my affinity for comparing seasonal/aged cheeses (especially with fruit) I simply couldn't tell the difference. It made logical sense for the same reason it does in cheese, the grazing and vegetation/feed pattern varies, but my palette couldn't tell the difference in finding the 'lavender and wild flower notes' these artisan guys went on about. Then again, I'm more of a olive oil person anyway, and that easily exceeds $50/liter so I understood their is a market for that and just nodded. As a chef later in life I had the same experience as hearing the sommelier talk about 'after notes of butter scotch, and whiffs of toffy' when describing what I thought was a rather mediocre chardonnay during pre-service with food pairing once: a lot of is just branding, but I'm glad it exists as its a big part of restaurant sales. But I just shrugged it off, and never ordered it myself.
garagemc2 6y ago
Out of curiosity what is the reputation of Lurpak like in Denmark? It's top shelf butter in most mainstream supermarkets in the UK and Australia.
- jb_s 6y ago
  Lurpak is pretty good for supermarket butter. But at least in Aus you can easily get more artisanal butter at the local deli or whatever. Pepe Saya is popular.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  2 stars out of 6 https://www.berlingske.dk/det-sunde-liv/test-her-er-det-bedste-smoer https://www.berlingske.dk/det-sunde-liv/test-her-er-det-beds... I guess I prefer Thise for daily butter use.
- OJFord 6y ago
  What? No it isn't, it's bog standard commodity butter. (UK) It's marginally cheaper than Président, (3p/100g) and marginally more expensive than Country Life (5p/100g) on Ocado. Perhaps a better benchmark - Waitrose's own essentials one is 13p/100g cheaper, and Waitrose's 'Duchy Organic' is 1p/100g more expensive. i.e. it's in the range of everyday butters that people buy the same brand of every time because that's what they buy every time (because that's what they ...).
yongjik 6y ago
On the other end of the scale, when I grew up in Korea our cheese tasted like congealed mayo with food coloring, and our "ham" was made of ground fish and flour. I didn't know the taste of an actual ham until I went to America for studying. These days I think it's not as bad, though Korea's major beer brands are still all shit.
- ido 6y ago
  Interesting that they save on ham by using fish! In Germany & Austria it's the opposite, pork is super cheap and fish is expensive (they don't use ground pork to fake fish products tho).
  - benibela 6y ago
    But they save on fish by mixing it with fluor (Fischstäbchen)
    - ido 6y ago
      Isn't that just battered (like schnitzel)? If you buy actual fish you get just fish.
      - benibela 6y ago
        Yes, but when I checked the label, I was surprised how little fish there is. Only 65% fish Apparently that is the minimal amount of fish they can use and still call it Fischstäbchen
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  I think within the next decade, the beer will become much better. It was only recently any micro-brewing started.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
I've had the same experience, but at home we usually had margarine or some other cheap butter replacement. My girlfriend insisted on getting real, salted butter and I have a newfound appreciation for it now.

jandrewrogers 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- jandrewrogers 6y ago
  Yes, this is typically butter that you eat directly for its own qualities. Like very good olive oil.
- samatman 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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).

yumraj 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- yumraj 6y ago
  it's a strong smell, but I guess you love the smells you grow with. Even now sometimes I make Ghee at home with store bought organic butter, as it's difficult to find organic ghee. Unfortunately it doesn't smell the same.
- jedimastert 6y ago
  As I understand it, there are a lot of strong smells (comparatively speaking) in an Indian kitchen
  - searchableguy 6y ago
    Even for me as an indian, it's a very strong smell.
  - balls187 6y ago
    Growing up with it doesn't always make it tolerable. My parents never made ghee (they're ethnic tamils from Malaysia), but good lord frying fish, or making fermented shrimp paste...yuck.

OldHand2018 6y ago

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.

taylorlunt 6y ago

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

Neil44 6y ago
It’s time for another Erlang purge.
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  How did that work last time? I'd suggest a different topic anyway, like GC algorithms or binary exploitation.
- odyssey7 6y ago
  Erlang purge?
  - Neil44 6y ago
    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 :)

m0zg 6y ago

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.

Xcelerate 6y ago
> We need double blind studies to see if it is. See my comment elsewhere in the thread; my wife and I did this (sample size of 2, but still...) There's definitely a difference between supermarket butter and "premium" butter — whether that's worth $50 is a matter of debate. I think the difference between butter brands is much more pronounced than differences between wine though.
AdrianB1 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
xutopia 6y ago
I can taste and smell a difference between grass fed beef butter and cow feed (mixture of hay and corn usually). I've done so in blind tests before. My favorite butters are French cultured butters and I prefer salted over unsalted. The tanginess you get from culture elevates the taste of butter to a whole other level.

justlexi93 6y ago

Wow, is that for real? I feel like all-butter somehow taste the safe and I am not a fancy person.

Xcelerate 6y ago

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.

swampthing 6y ago
Interesting, I felt Échiré was more or less indistinguishable from Isigny Sainte-Mère, but that Rodolphe Le Meunier was in a league of its own.
jjgreen 6y ago
Échiré is fantastic, if a bit steep. It's fairly easy to get in Paris, and you can find it in London if you know where to look. Bizarrely, I've only ever seen the demi sel in London.
- RandomBacon 6y ago
  I did a web search for "Échiré". First result was an Amazon product page at $25, second result was a gourmet food store at $8 for the same thing. both results were for 250g (half pound) of demi sel
Talanes 6y ago
I can vouch for that assessment of Clover. It has flavor, but not in a particularly pleasant way. I've had better luck with unrecognizable bargain brand premium butters.

seanwilson 6y ago

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_Comparative_life_cycle_assessment_of_margarine_and_butter_consumed_in_the_UK_Germany_and_France https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225411135_Comparati... > 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 6y ago
Margarine tastes like shit. If you want some plant based fats for spreading - just make mayo. Takes 5 minutes.
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  Mayo has egg
  - triceratops 6y ago
    Doesn't need to. Veganaise tastes pretty good - I genuinely can't tell the difference.
    - sorryitstrue 6y ago
      ah but he said mayo. its a protected term and must have egg!
      - aaronblohowiak 6y ago
        Fun story about this: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-manyonnaise-yet-still.html http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2017/08/when-mayo-is-not-manyon...

tmaly 6y ago

I would definitely try it once if I could get my hands on a pound. I have been cooking more with the lockdown.

dash2 6y ago

"No, it isn't." There ya go.

paypalcust83 6y ago

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 6y ago
Or just let cows graze in fields? You don't even need to harvest the grass then.

somberi 6y ago

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

pantulis 6y ago

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.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dlkf 6y ago

Butteridge's law of headlines

onion2k 6y ago
It makes me sad that your comment was downvoted. HN needs more fun.
- oska 6y ago
  It really doesn't. Not punning wordplay fun anyway.

hoseja 6y ago

Relevant SMBC https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/milk https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/milk

war1025 6y ago
> 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 6y ago

"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.

AlisdairO 6y ago

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.

blue_devil 6y ago

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 6y ago
In case you didn't know: https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-is-cruel/ https://sentientmedia.org/dairy-is-cruel/
- BenjiWiebe 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.