SC - English butter?

[Mordonna22@aol.com]

- -Poster: Jean Holtom <Snowfire at sprynet.com>
  
>Hmmm. It occurs to me that either a) Americans are used to eating foods
>that are not really  preserved, but just sort of taste like they are,
>like bacon that'll go off in a day,

Maybe their not preserving bacon as well - I don't know, but they certainly 
preserve milk and yogurt to the gills.  Our milk only lasts a couple of days 
before going sour, here it lasts much longer and has no cream on top, and it took 
me a while to get over the high taste of preservatives in the yogurt.  At first I 
couldn't tolerate it!

>and comparison between American and
>British butters makes British butter seem saltier, or b) as has been
>pointed out in connection with fat, perhaps the British haven't [yet]
>become as insanely sodium-conscious as the average American.

I was raised on butter being the thing to eat on the table, for bread etc.  
margarine was only for my father who didn't like butter, and we salted everything, 
BUT a lot of it was cooked from scratch and very bland in comparison (only high 
salt thing except for the butter was probably bacon, and tomato soup)!
    
>> We do call butter "Best Butter" sometimes however,  

>Certainly I'd bet the worst American butter is easily as good as or
>better than the worst British butter, largely because what the American
>food industry is really obsessed with is consistency, even over quality
>(witness McDonald's). A sort of dedicated mediocrity.

like Taco Bell - cardboard city

>I gather that the concept of "Best Butter" probably corresponds to the
>USDA's grading system.

I'm supposing so then :)

>It does bring to mind the question of what kind of market exists for 
>Worst Butter. Ghee?  

? goes into "butter flavoured products maybe?

The gentle lady Aemilia brought up something I was not aware of though, that there 
is less water content in the English butter, which apparently does increase the 
flavour and also would increase the salty taste I would imagine.  Also, in talking 
about the highest quality butter imaginable, I wonder about the differences in 
butter caused by the specific herds of cows used to provide the milk.  Usually we 
see Herefords and Frisians used, but Jersey cows produce milk that has a far richer 
cream (it's yellow) (sold as gold top milk in Britain) any butter made from that 
would be superb I would think, but alas I've never heard of any.

Elysant

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