From a happy accident to a magical concoction which only dairy maids could get right, to being avoided or replaced by cheaper (and lesser healthy) alternatives- it looks like butter has had quite the bumpy ride. Khosrova takes us on a journey as she writes about Yak butter from Bhutan, butter from water buffalo’s milk which she tasted in Punjab, Tibetan butter sculptures, a butter artefact collector’s treasures in New Jersey, the famous Le Beurre Bordier butter in France, Swedish butter maker Patrik Johansson and so much more. If Julia Child made us fall in love with butter, Khosrova makes us look at it with reverence and sometimes flinch a little considering how misunderstood it is. Elaine Khosrova’s book Butter A Rich Historyplaces this protagonist at the centre of many significant events in history which had a much larger impact than food in dining halls. It seems rather incredulous if you think about this way- ages ago (we are talking sometime in the Neolithic era), a serendipitous accident of milk stored in an animal skin bag, rocked back and forth through its journey led to butter- the protagonist in the first known student protest. This was the first student protest in American history, and while it was about butter, it implicated the declining state of food in the university’s dining halls. “Behold, our butter stinketh!-Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not,” was what Henry Thoreau’s grandfather Asa Dunbar proclaimed in 1766 in Harvard.
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