Great site. This is my first post. I’m hoping someone out there can shed some light on a topic that has been occupying me for some weeks now. I’ll get right to it.
I had heard that the east coast prefers unsalted butter, and that the west prefers salted. I’d heard that this pattern has held since the days of the American pioneers, when salt was used as a preservative in butter. The further westward the pioneers came, the saltier the butter tended to be… the westerner’s taste for salt increasing along with the distance from the east.
I am excited that our history could be preserved in consumer patterns.
I’ve written emails to every dairy in the country. So far, there’s been nothing but wishes of good luck in my search.
I bring this question before you, the readers and posters of the Straight Dope. I hope that, finally, some light can be shed on this question, and I can put this baby to bed.
Welcome to the SDMB. Since this isn’t a comment on one of Cecil’s columns, I’ll move this thread. I’ll presume you meant this as a question with a factual answer and not as a poll, so I’ll move it to General Questions.
Arrgh. We are re-doing the library, so a lot of my books are packed away! The two books that I would have looked in are Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser and Eating in America by Waverly Root and Richard DeRochemont. There are others that I would have checked as well. I looked in 2 major references that are not packed away, and they had nothing about this.
IOW, I don’t have an answer yet, but I’m on the job!
I’d say this entire premise is untrue. I’ve lived on the East Coast my whole life, and NO ONE I know likes unsalted butter. The only time it’s ever been served has been when one of the dinner guests had high blood pressure, or for some reason it was being used in a recipe (many of which call for unsalted butter) and the extra butter needed to be gotten rid of.
So, in my experience, the usual East Coast reaction to unsalted butter has been, “Eeewwww…”
What is wrong with you people?! Unsalted butter is the only way to go! Anyhow, it’s an interesting theory…I’m from Chicago, and I think the general preference would be salted butter, but my family and most Eastern Europeans in the neighborhood seem to prefer the unsalted variety.
I gotta agrre with that. I’m a born and bred Yankee and have salted Land O’Lakes butter running throungh my veins (btw, did you ever do that trick where you cut out the LOL ladies knees from one side of the box, cut around three sides of the butter box she’s holding on another side, and then tape the knees behind the box? Guranteed laughs for a young boy.)
As mentioned, a lot of recipes, especially baking ones, call for unsalted butter. Apprarently the saltiness of butter can vary a lot, and exact salt content is important for consistent results in cooking, so bakers prefer to control the amount on their own.
My mom was raised on a dairy farm in Georgia, during the Depression. She used to get nostalgic and churn butter by hand occasionally when I was a kid. For what it’s worth, she always salted her butter.
Use of salt as a preservative is not a strictly western phenomenon. It would certainly have been as important in the East as in the West prior to the advent of refrigeration, no?
Salt-cured pork products, for example, have always been a staple of the southern diet.
Grew up near Philadelphia 60’s and 70’s - salted butter certainly prevailed - never heard of “Sweet” or unsalted butter till I started shopping for myself and found a little hidden amidst all the salt stuff at the Acme, and immediately found I prefer it. Still get salt butter occasionally for the variety, tho…
For what it’s worth, I’ve heard the same theory applied to coffee. As the pioneers went westward, grounds got scarcer and the brew got weaker. Supposedly, that’s why westerners like weak coffee, and easterners like it strong.
When the American West was being settled, the folks in the wagon trains were at the same disadvantage as those back home - no refrigeration. Even a root cellar wouldn’t keep fresh butter palatable for very long. So, wouldn’t most butter have been salted?
People had “ice boxes” for a loooooong time before refrigeration. During the winter, ice would be cut from lakes and packed in ice houses that were very well insulated (or as well as they knew how in those days). Ice was then sold all summer long from horse-drawn wagons. Remember the Bill Cosby joke about the talking horse?
This principal would apply equally well for Western settlers, but when the settlers were on the move, they certainly couldn’t carry enough ice with them to last the journey.
So I would guess that Westward travelling pioneers needed to make much greater use of non-ice-based food preservation techniques, and salted butter might be part of that.
sford - I live right near a lake that was one of the world’s largest producer’s of block ice for iceboxes. It managed to stay in business well after World War II. It was my understanding that these iceboxes were mostly used to store meats, fish, and milk. Bulk items like vegetables, fruits (and butter) could be easily preserved and were stored underground where possible to keep them cool. I still think that most sweet cream butter during the latter half of the 19th century would have been salted.
I’ve been trying to talk to the host of the radio show where I originally heard this theory. No luck yet. Maybe by the weekend.
I have written to dairies around the country, with mixed results. About half of the respondants dismiss the theory, and about half go with it. But, for all of them, it’s been anecdotal; no one can give me numbers. People will tell me the theory is rubbish because " they live in Pennsylvania and THEY love salted butter" or “It’s true because my granny in Oregon uses only salted butter.” It is true that chefs use unsalted butter, because it melts better and allows for more control of salt in the recipe, but I’m talking about the general public’s consumption pattern.
I’d really like to get my hands on the numbers, but no luck yet. As far as I know, the butter distributor that would be in a position to know is Land O’ Lakes; they’re the only nationwide distributor of butter. But their response was the least helpful, a corporate, robotic :
“we are sorry that we are unable to help you with your hypothesis.”
Maybe their customer relations department is fed up with people making land o lakes peek a boo boxes:
I did a quick Google search on “salted butter history” and found that people in medieval Sweden salted their butter. (A lot – 1 lb salt to 10 lbs butter.) So salted butter had been around for a good long time.
Given the need to preserve food in the pre-icebox age, perhaps a better question is: when did people stop salting their butter to preserve it?
I don’t know that we’ve established that salting butter does preserve butter. My parents never refrigerated their butter, and I don’t ever remember it becoming tainted with bacteria or mold. If kept too long, it became rancid, which I seem to remember is a chemical change. Perhaps salting will help stave off that chemical change too, but that assertion does not follow obviously from the salting of meats.
A related factoid. Most margarine has at least some milk in it. But there are many people who are need to have a completely non-dairy margarine. I only know of two popular brands that offer a non-dairy margarine - Fleishman’s and Imperial - and in both cases they are also the unsalted versions. Is there a reason for combining their no-salt versions with their no-dairy? It might be a simple matter of demand; maybe the demand for salted non-dairy and unsalted dairy versions is quite small. If those who require unsalted don’t care about dairy and those who require non-dairy don’t care about salt, then it makes sense for them to combine them. Any ideas?
That salt was originally added to butter to act as a preservative is easily confirmed by visiting any site “worth it’s salt”. There’s alot of information on http://www.saltinstitute.org
Q: What’s the difference between salted and unsalted butter?
A: Salt acts as a preservative and adds flavor to butter. Lightly salted butter is sometimes called “sweet cream butter,” and is best used as a table butter and for general cooking needs. Unsalted butter, too, is “sweet butter,” but is used mainly for baking. Although unsalted and salted butter may be specifically recommended for cooking or baking particular items, they can generally be substituted for one another.
As for the butter left out by your parents - Was that butter salted or unsalted? My guess would be that it had some salt in it.
I’m still trying to figure out what the difference between rancid and “going bad” is. I’m reading that many chefs prefer to use unsalted butter because salt “masks the taste of rancid butter” This seems to suggest that butter could still be “good” ( ie. edible ) but still be rancid ( ie. offensive to the tastebuds ) … any ideas?
Seems to me the best way to gauge local preference (instead of going door to door) would simply be to go into the supermarket and see what is stocked in the largest quantity. Everybody head to the Safeway and report back here!
Unsalted butter is the only way to go! Anyhow, it’s an interesting theory…I’m from Chicago, and I think the general preference would be salted butter, but my family and most Eastern Europeans in the neighborhood seem to prefer the unsalted variety.