Butter: A Rich History

Former pastry chef Khosrova shines a spotlight on butter, a simple, ubiquitious staple. Khosrova’s history is intimate and far-reaching, whether sampling the butter produced at farms in remote regions of the world or peeking into middle-class pantries. Throughout, she explores ancient and modern practices of creaming, churning, flavoring, and selling butter. She even includes discussions on margarine’s shady past and how it went from a cost-effective butter replacement to a health and marketing quagmire. Khosrova, who has worked at Country Living and Healthy Living magazines and has an obvious passion for food, pays homage to longtime butter-making traditions in India, Bhutan, Tibet, France, and the U.S. She discusses, among other things, camel butter, how some butter emits a golden aura, and how, before the industrial revolution, a dairy maid could always find a job. The book opens with an ode to butter by poet Elizabeth Alexander, and closes with an appendix on with how to say butter in over 50 languages. Khosrova’s ambitious project is a successful, fascinating account of a common dairy product. (Nov.)