[Sca-cooks] cow butter?

[Susan Lin]

I cringe to mention it here but recently (2 or 3 months ago) there were a
couple of articles in the NYT that discussed a NYC restaurant serving "mommy
cheese" - cheese the owner had made with his wife's breast milk (and some
cow milk because breast milk does not have enough protien in it).  They
claimed it was because their child could not consume all she was producing
(my question to her - why not donate it to a milk bank???)

I have a friend who wanted to try to make cheese from her breast milk for
her daughter - not the general public.  We never did but now that she's
about to have #2 maybe we'll give it a try??!!

The NYC health department said that there was nothing illegal about the
restaurant making the cheese using human breast milk as long as the process
met health code requirements.  Still and all - I don't think I'd be ordering
it off the menu!

Shoshanna

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 5:49 AM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at att.net> wrote:

>
> Guillaume posted two recipes from "Nuevo Arte de Cocina" which might be for
>> fur seals, although I'm not sure that the directions for cooking a fur seal
>> and a pike fish would be combined. The two animals seem so different.
>>
>>
> As I recall, dietary rules made some very odd determinations as to what
> were "fish."  Taxonomic distinctions that are normal for you and I are
> largely a product of the 18th Century.
>
>
> Another thing in the recipe that has me wondering is the mention of "cow
>> butter". Is there no general term for "butter" in Spanish? Or do recipes
>> tend to call out specific types of butter?
>>
>>
> Manteca or mantequilla, although, I believe, here in the U.S. you are more
> likely to encounter manteca being used as the short form of manteca de cerdo
> or lard.  I would say the cook is being very specific about the butter to
> achieve a certain effect.
>
>
> Other than things like salted butter or unsalted butter, (well and
>> Icelandic fermented butter, which we've discussed), I didn't realize that
>> there were different types of butter from different animals. I know that
>> cheese is often made from sheep's milk or goat's milk, but I've not heard of
>> goat or sheep butter before. I don't remember seeing other butters in my
>> grocery store. But maybe it is available in some ethnic stores?
>>
>>
> Butter type is largely a cultural thing based on the most common
> domesticated animals in a culture.  Butter has been produced from cows,
> sheep, goats, water buffalos, yaks, and even camels.  The general
> American/European bias toward cow butter is most probably an artifact of
> availability, quantity, and fat content.  The French, being their contrarian
> Gallic selves, also produce goat butter (IIRC).
>
>
> Do we see "sheep" or "goat" butter called out in some medieval recipes?
>>
>> Are there certain milks which won't coagulate into butter? What about
>> human milk?
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>
> Butter is made from cream rather than milk and is a condensed, emulsified
> fat.  ISTR, that there are mammal milks which do not contain enough fat to
> make cream and that human milk is among them, but I would suggest
> researching that rather than take my spotty memories as gospel.
>
> Bear
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