Since even accidental agitation can turn cream into butter, it’s likely that its invention dates from the beginning of dairying, perhaps in the Mesopotamian area between ten thousand and eleven thousand years ago. The earliest butter would have been from sheep’s or goat’s milk since cattle were not domesticated until a thousand years later. An ancient method of butter-making, still used today in parts of Africa and the Near East, involves a goatskin half filled with milk, then inflated with air before being sealed. The skin is then hung with ropes on sticks and rocked until the butter comes.

Throughout the Middle Ages, especially in northern Europe, butter was considered a food for the peasants. It was also used as oil in lamps. In the British Isles, butter was wrapped in skin and buried in peat bogs for preservation. Buttermaking was considered women’s work; perhaps all things to do with milk was the purview of women. It was “house work” while “land work,” outside work, was considered men’s work. Butter was made by hand until 1860. Then the manufacturing of cheese began and it was easy to also mechanize the production of butter. Suddenly, it was no longer women’s work and the price rose. By the 1950s, more margarine than butter was sold as it was cheaper and considered healthier. Now, in dollar amounts, margarine and butter are about equal, but because it’s cheaper, more pounds of margarine sell than butter. Interestingly, butter sales have stayed the same or inched up slightly, while margarine sales have decreased.

In a cooking class, I learned that butter is a great cooking medium because of its rich flavor and the attractive brown color it awards cooked foods. However, it doesn’t withstand high heat as well as oils. Cookie dough and some cake batters are partly leavened by creaming butter and sugar together, which establishes air bubbles in the butter. In the heat of baking, the trapped bubbles expand. Shortbread cookies have no other source of moisture but the water in the butter. In pie dough, solid fat becomes layered when the dough is rolled. In the oven, the fat melts, leaving a flaky texture. Because of its flavor, butter is a delicious fat in such a crust, but it is more difficult to work with than shortening because of its low melting point. I’d been making piecrusts for decades before this was explained to me. I simply followed what my mother had taught me. Now, I understand why it’s helpful to chill all your ingredients and utensils when you’re working with butter dough. Rosie, Juliet, and Taylor make cookies that require chilling the dough before baking.

7

Jeannie

Fortune Cookies

Fortunes

1 large egg white

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract

1/4 all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoons melted butter

Write fortunes on pieces of paper that are 3 1/2 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 2 9 × 13-inch baking sheets.