I’m in western Oregon and I see both butter shapes in stores, but the “western” shape is by far the most common. We don’t use butter much but keep it on hand for baking and I prefer the “eastern” shape as it thaws faster (both are 4oz or half a cup in volume).
I never did understand what I assume is a marketing reason behind the Hellmans/Best Foods thing.
Most likely, they were originally different companies, but one bought the other out, and kept the original name because that’s what customers (at least, customers in that part of the country) were familiar with.
Like Carl’s Jr. and Hardees.
I noticed the same thing. I guess the reason is that there’s no such thing as a Butterbrot in America. Sure, there are sandwiches, but butter doesn’t seem to be a necessary item when eating bread like in Germany.
Wikipedia explains the history of Hellmann’s and Best Foods. Chronos’s explanation is correct.
In short, Richard Hellmann started making mayonnaise and selling it under his name in New York in 1905. Meanwhile, Postum Foods was selling their own mayo called Best Foods Mayonnaise in California. In 1920 Postum bought Hellmann’s. “By then both brands of mayonnaise had such commanding market shares in their respective halves of the country that the company decided that both brands and recipes be preserved in their respective territories.” This implies that the mayos are actually not identical and have, or at least at one time had, different recipes. I wonder if that’s still true.
Also, four of the eastern butter sticks are the same shape as a standard pound of butter cut into fourths.
Although sold for scraping cheese, these utensils also work great for scraping butter, just thick enough for buttering bread or biscuits and thin enough to thaw quickly:
Butter has been sold as four quarter pound sticks in a container since I’ve been a kid. Recently I’ve seen packages of eight sticks in a pound.
Do other people remember the butter dish? Butter wasn’t kept in a refrigerator. It had a covered dish just larger than a stick which was left on the kitchen table for use on toast. This was on the east coast. I assume the dish was a different shape on the west coast.
Another east/west pair of names is EDY’s and Dreyer’s ice cream.
Wait, are we not doing this anymore? This is exactly how I keep butter. Canada only divides the expensive butter: the stuff I can afford comes in one-454g wodge (coincidentally, this is precisely one pound, though you wouldn’t know it from the labelling). It usually almost fits in the butter dish designed for that amount.
I don’t use butter very often so it’s refrigerated
I keep one to this day, so that I can have butter at room (spreadable) temperature, as I intensely dislike margarine. My cardiac doc intensely dislikes my love for butter 
I thought this was a typo for “wedge” and was picturing wheels of butter cut into wedges like cheese … but the Googlez informs me that “wodge” is, itself, a perfectly cromulent word.
I shall endeavor to incorporate this new term into my vocabulary!
There’s a “butter season” for keeping butter out where it’s just warm enough for butter to spread but cool enough to keep reasonably long.
We keep spreadable butter, i.e. mixed with olive or canola oil, in the refrigerator for spreading purposes. The difference in taste is negligible. Our cooking butter is bought in 1 pound packages, put in the freezer, and taken out a stick at a time and kept in the refrigerator.
I have no idea what a cooking column would say about these habits but they fit our specific needs.
Yeah, I only put out what I’ll use in a few days. In Oregon it’s not too big a deal, even in summertime. Down home in Louisiana, it’d be a different story.
Whipped butter is the greatest invention since the sliced bread you put it on. We keep a container out on the counter (at room temp) at all times. One usually lasts less than two weeks. (Household of three adults.)
Before we started using that, I would just keep a stick of salted butter in a butter dish on the counter. Never went bad, but it wasn’t out more than about a week or ten days.
Canadian (at least in the East) butter is most commonly sold as a “metric pound” - i.e. 454 grams.
Is 454 g the definition of a metric pound in Canada? Because in my metric country of Germany, a pound means half a kilo, so 500 g. It’s not an official unit, but still often used when ordering in butcheries or grocery stores.
Entirely useless bit of information I encountered: the menswear combo of turtleneck under lapeled jacket? Maybe the image that comes to mind is 1968 Steve McQueen, but the pairing was first made fashionable by Noel Coward in the 1920’s (probably inspired on working men dressing themselves out of rag bins)
Ehhh… we have butter in a butter dish in the refrigerator right now. There’s a specific reason: it’s posh butter and comes in a roll (250g), so it’s really difficult and messy to try re-wrapping after use.
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