I wonder whether there is another country where butter plays such an emotional (for lack of a better term) role in the collective imagination. Germans do have a thing about butter: it is the item that is sold cheaper and advertised prominently to lure people into shops, it is the staple that is mentioned when prices go up (like petrol in other countries. Well OK, petrol is mentioned in Germany too). And the phrase that goes naturally with Butter is “die gute Butter”: the good butter. At least in my mind. When something is perfect the Germans say “alles in Butter!” (everything is in butter, literally. Makes no sense? That is what I am trying to point out). I will not even try to translate “Butter bei die Fische!” or “sich (nicht) die Butter vom Brot nehmen lassen”, expressions you hear again and again. The relation Germans have developed with butter sometimes seems mystical to me.
For comparison: I know of not one single standing expression in Spanish that mentions butter off the top of my head. There are webpages full in German.
No, I think the Germans are on to something, there: Everything is better when it’s in butter.
Everything? Most food, perhaps. But clothes, in particular underwear? Books? Beer and whisky? Hmm… now you made me curious: must try that.
ETA: disgusting!
There is another way to look at this, though. I was reading some effete hollandaise recipe, in which it said to whisk the yolk/wine mix in a double boiler while dropping in tablespoon slices of butter, waiting for each to melt fully before adding the next. A west coast tablespoon slice (cubes are always labeled thus) would be broader and thinner than an east coast slice, and so should melt faster.
I’ve always wanted to know what “good butter” is compared to “bad butter”, a term that never comes up. Was the term “good butter” coined in olden times to differentiate it from butter that’s gone rancid? Or was it only used after the invention of margarine? Or is it a WWII term, when real butter was hard to get? It’s a term my grandmothers would have used, but unfortunately I never asked them when they were still alive.
ETA: the expression “gute Butter” in German is on the same level as “Bohnenkaffee” (bean coffee). @Pardel-Lux will know what I mean. This is definitely a term that was coined in times of shortage.
I have a friend in Wisconsin whose uncle used to smuggle margarine in.
Huh? Why does someone have to smuggle margarine? Was it spiked with anything?
From “Netherend Farm” no less. ROFL!!
I have the feeling this is it: it sounds völkisch* to me (link in German), like Heimatfilme (link in English), though the genre Heimatfilm was created after WWII according to the link. But I may be completely off here.
* Völkisch has rasist undertones for sure. Bohnenkaffee does not, it was used to distinguish proper coffee from ersatz, often chicoree. Café de achicoria is a term in Spanish too: same meaning, same connotations. Die gute Butter… not so sure. No idea what to search to elucidate it.
ETA: Ersatz, btw, is a German word that simply means substitute.
ETA (2): Heimatfilme were called Volksfilme before WWII and were made and called Heimatfilme during the Nazi regime, Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl being prominent examples. The German wikipage has much more information than the English one. Hmm… nice rabbit hole here.
Yeah, I know this, that’s why I suggested that “gute Butter” was used in WWII in contrast to margarine, which of course also is ersatz. My parents were born in 1935 or 1939, respectively, they remember the war well and I asked them a lot about it, but they couldn’t elucidate the meaning of “gute Butter”, they only remembered that it was a common term in their childhood.
Yes. The color yellow.
Well, I heard a lot of bizarre stories about things going differently in America, but this takes the cake. Free trade and free market anyone? 
It’s a story like the champagne tax in Germany that was introduced by Willhelm II to finance his pet war fleet and is still in use today. Sorry, only German link:
ETA: found an English link with info about the “Schaumweinsteuer”:
There is of course the saying “guns and butter” or “guns or butter”. Guns versus butter model - Wikipedia says that the term supposedly arose during World War One when there was a perceived conflict between allocating nitrates for fertilizer or munitions.
In southern Europe it’s more likely to be olive oil than butter, and of course in India they refine butter completely into “ghee”- butterfat- because it keeps better in a hot climate.
This is why Hellman’s brand slogan is "Bring out the Hellman’s and bring out the best "
Indeed. That was a plot point in one of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. tie-in novels back in the mid-60s. THRUSH was doing something nasty in Wisconsin and ours boys had to stop it. One car chase was ended by throwing softened handfuls of margarine that the Sheriff was smuggling.
That’s when I first became aware of the fact that Badger Staters be whack.
Goebbels also used this “alternative” in his perhaps most famous speech, the Sportpalast Speech 1943, where he shouted “Do you want total war!?!?”, though the English wikipedia does not mention the butter.
The Morgenthau Plan also mentioned this dichotomy: Morgenthau advocated for completely dismantling Germany’s industry (guns) after its defeat to make it an agricultural (butter) harmless state.
I grew up hearing that jingle in Chicago. When I moved to California and started hearing “Bring out the Best Foods and bring out the best” it sounded really weird, like a parody or something.
They could put George Takei’s picture on the Hellman’s label and bring in the dyslexic customers
(because he played the helmsman on Star Trek. Maybe I’m over-explaining this?)
Same thing in Los Angeles. Also, that skinnier butter is “European Style,” and I’ve found it often has a different shape.
I eat bread and butter a lot, but I never put butter on bread that I’m using for a sandwich. The Brits also butter the bread in their sandwiches from what I’ve seen in movies and TV.
I grew up in L.A., so the Best Foods version sounds better to me. It “rhymes” with the “bring out the best.” Hellman’s doesn’t make sense.