You don’t make your own butter?
Color me confused.
Signed
-The Amish Butter Guy
I’ll bet that most people here are actually talking about margarine.
Mark me down as a butter-only user. After considering the evidence, I concluded butter, with all its saturated fat, is less damaging to my heart than the trans-fat in margarine.
I haven’t actually measured my butter sticks here in the Netherlands (oh, all right, all right, all right. Hang on a minute)…
…Okay. The typical slab of Dutch butter (organic “roomboter” or pure cream butter) appears to be about 3 inches x 4 inches x 1.5 inches (yes, I used an inch ruler on my European metric butter, I need inch rulers for sewing projects with American instructions, so bite me, cloggies), which sounds more like two of the Californian or “Western pack” butter sticks stuck together, not two of the long skinny “Elgin” sticks.
So I guess there are different variations for European butter dimensions. Does the EU trade commission know about this?
Margarine is the same as shorting or lard as far as it’s palatability for me.
I eat only butter.
In Canada, I’ve seen the same thing. Just a big slab of butter - no sticks. It’s hard to manage when it’s that huge.
Nope, we’re talking about butter. Margarine is a vile substance that’s not allowed in my home.
In Australia there is a choice of unsalted (American “sweet” butter?), salted and cultured, which is like European butters.
Thank you Harmonious Discord for the conversion, that’s a handy thing to know. Although I still don’t understand why you’d measure butter by cup size. Surely weighing it would be easier and less messy and or wasteful?
eGullet thread about butter.
We don’t have to measure it in a cup. The sticks have tablespoon marks on the paper wrapper. Older recipies would have weighed amounts of flour, butter, other ingredients. Books like Betty Crocker’s Cook Book and our FDA did a lot to standardize food ingredients. A great boon for cooks and no need to weigh ingrediants or have to greatly worry on quality. Much food can only use a certain name or term if it meets the FDA guide lines. An example is each grade of eggs must weigh a certain amount. You have to call something a drink if it is diluted beyond a certain amount, and not juice.
We don’t have to measure it in a cup. The sticks have tablespoon marks on the paper wrapper. Older recipies would have weighed amounts of flour, butter, other ingredients. Books like Betty Crocker’s Cook Book and our FDA did a lot to standardize food ingredients. A great boon for cooks and no need to weigh ingrediants or have to greatly worry on quality. Much food can only use a certain name or term if it meets the FDA guide lines. An example is each grade of eggs must weigh a certain amount. You have to call something a drink if it is diluted beyond a certain amount, and not juice.
God forbid. Ewwww. And other such commentary.
A pint’s a pound, the world around, even for butter. 
(OK, nitpickers, so it isn’t exact. It’s close enough YOU’LL never know the difference, even in the butter cookies you are about to make for Xtmas)
Then what category does “I can’t believe it’s not butter” fall into? Quite frankly, if it’s not butter, I’m not sure I want to know what it is.
It would be margerine trying to trick a consumer into buying it by making butter part of it’s name in large print. That circumvents the food labeling laws, and I wish they’d ban the practice like they did for some other products. It’s hard enough buying what you want, when your mental accuity is declined.
Right. I’ve noticed the same when I vacation in PEI. I’ll buy a pound of butter in a package similar to those in the US, but it isn’t further subdivided into sticks; it is just one big slab o’ butter. It sounds from sattua’s description that it is available in half pound slabs in Europe.
I’m not always thrilled with the way that things are done in the US, but I think that 1/4 pound sticks make a lot more sense than larger ones. When baking or cooking, it is easy to cut off a length based on the number of tablespoons required; I’ve tried on one pound sticks and it isn’t nearly as easy. And how often does one need more than a pat at the table? With the smaller stick, only a small amount stays at room temperature, and the rest can stay in the refrigerator until needed. JMO.
I grew up with the pound slabs, and I’m fairly sure they’re still available at the store.
I apparently live the center of butter choice.
Two words:
Butter Bell
Where I grew up, one could buy butter in one-pound slabs or in pound boxes containing four of the normal 5"x1.25"x 1.25" sticks, individually wrapped. My mother always bought the pound slabs and quartered it using a cheese slicer. (Both were available both salted and unsalted.) Lately I’ve noticed boxes containing two sticks, at about 70% the price of the four-stick pound boxes.
With regard to the “I Can’t Believe…” and Land of Lakes’s “Buttery-Taste,” I believe they are margarine to which a small amount of butter has been added to give it a butter flavor.