Butter Manufacture & Ingredients: Salted vs. Un-

Factual Questions
1

This is more of an agribusiness question than a culinary one. So I picked GQ over CS. We’ll see if TPTB agree …

Over the last 40+ years I’ve been paying attention, in the US butter is commonly available as either salted or unsalted.

The ingredient list of salted butter is/was always “Cream, salt” or lately “Cream (milk), salt”. So far, so simple. I just checked 2 nearby grocery stores and all 6 distinct brands of unsalted butter had “Cream (milk), salt” as the ingredient list.

Historically I’d seen unsalted butter with an ingredient list of “Cream, annato color” or sometimes “Cream, natural color”. When I just checked those same 6 brands of unsalted butter, all 6 said “Cream (milk), natural flavorings”.

Wiki Butter - Wikipedia tells us the color of butter varies by climate, animal feed, and the breed of cow. So coloring agents, usually annatto, are often added to standardize the color. It also indicates that the added salt is both a flavoring and a preservative. So far, so sensible.

Now the questions:

If manufacturers believe colorants are needed to standardize the color of unsalted butter, why is this not also true for salted butter? In 40+ years of shopping I’ve never seen a colorant listed in salted butter. Considering that unsalted butter is mostly for baking & salted is for table use, it seems the manufacturers are controlling the appearance of the wrong type. What’s really going on here?

When and why did the additives in unsalted butter switch from being labeled natural colorings to natural flavorings? Is/Was it just a nomenclature change in the regulations, or are they now able to add actual flavoring agents? What flavorants are commonly used?

When did “Cream” become “Cream (milk)”? Is that to allow the use of less than 100% cream, or is it to make it obvious to the illiterate population of the USA that butter is made from, you know, moo juice, rather than, say, soybeans & HFCS?

Anybody who has any useful knowledge of butter production feel free to expound on these or any related topic you’d like.

Thanks in advance …

2

Note that salted butter may be used as a table spread where color is important while unsalted butter is usually used for cooking/baking where color doesn’t matter so much.

3

The cream/milk thing is because there is a government set minimum level of butter fat in cream. Going below that the product has to specify milk. I don’t know what current regulations on this are, but butter used to be one of those things where no ingredients had to be listed if it was composed of some standard ingredients. Regulations are more stringent now for ingredient labeling requirements. But I believe anything labelled as ‘Butter’ is still restricted to some basic set of ingredients.

4

True.

But as I said, that’s the opposite of how the butters are colored. Salted table butter has no dyes. It’s the unsalted baking butter which has the dyes. Color me confused. :confused:

5

Calling it “Cream (milk)” makes it sound like they’re distinguishing it from cold cream or Brylcreem or something. Does “Cream (milk)” have a different fat percentage than just “cream”? Wikipediadoesn’t have that term listed.

6

Don’t know, but it may allow them to use cream with the butterfat content controlled by adding milk to cream to which was never seperated. I don’t even know if it’s listed as a requirement, or just for clarity.

BTW: Salted butter is used for cooking too. Sometimes for the addition of the salt, and in saute it has a higher smoke point. In baking unsalted is preferred because precise control of the amount of salt is important.

7

This quote from the Wikipedia butter page may explain it

8

I assume this is a typo and you meant “salted”?

It that common? I use very little salt when I cook, and I want to know at least approximately how much I’m using. If there’s salt in my other ingredients, it throws things off.

9

That could well be it.

10

D’oh!! :smack:

I re-read & re-read that OP to ensure I got all the uns in the right place, and no extras. As always, one slipped through. Yes, the ingredient list of 6 brands of *salted *butter were seen to be “Cream (milk), salt”. Thanks.

:smack::smack::smack:

11

Good recipes should specify salted or unsalted butter, but then there’s no standard amount of salt in salted butter, so that doesn’t really tell you much, except for some dishes intended to be salty.

I don’t bake much, but I understand too much salt toughens dough, and in baking, unsalted butter should be the default.

For saute, the increased smoke point of salted butter can be seen when making omelets, with quality butter. But there days commerical brands maximize the amount of water and milk solids allowed, and they seem to be a bigger factor in overheating butter. Often people over heat the pan, and when the water has boiled out the temperature of the butter increases rapidly and burns. The solids burn at a lower termperature than the butter fat also. Clarified butter has the highest smoke point you can get with butterfat, but you can just add a little bit of oil to butter to keep it from being a problem. I mostly use olive oil for all types of cooking, keeping both extra virgin and filtered oil on hand. So even where the butter flavor is needed, I’ll just add in some oil. But eggs can be cooked without sticking and burning by keeping the pan at the right temperature.

12

Labelling laws regarding the big eight allergens make the (milk) mandatory. As for the year, it’s sometime within the last ten. I remember when the regulation was passed, but not the grace period.

As for the flavorings, I suspect that it’s diacetyl or else some lactones that might be absent from the milk.

Just a SWAG here, but butter used to be made primarily after the cows were put on pasture. I doubt the shelf life of salted butter extends to the extreme that the salted butter may have been only made during that window of time.

13

I once used salted butter in my world famous Hershey Bar cake. I modify the recipe to make a layer cake, and end up with a little extra batter - usually enough to make six really rich cupcakes. So I took the cupcakes with me to my regular bar and gave them to the staff and some friends…and told them that while they are completely edible, there is something wrong with them. I asked them to figure out the problem. No one did. They didn’t even think anything was wrong.

I could taste the salt, because I knew exactly what to expect.

I got lucky with that one. :slight_smile:
-D/a