Handy Facts at a Glance

History

  1. Butter has been appreciated for thousands of years for its great taste.
  2. Butter went on the list of rationed products only four months after the start of World War II. Every Brit was allowed just 4ozs. (113.4 grams) of butter.
  3. Made using buttermilk, margarine is the watery by-product of actual butter manufacture, which was developed by a French chemist in the mid-19th Century as a synthetic edible fat.
  4. Butter has featured in the Bible, in Ancient Egyptian texts, in the arsenal of warring Imperial Roman legions and the surgeries of doctors in classical Athens.
  5. In Quebec, Canada, a law existed until July 2008 which stated that margarine must be a different colour from butter. When the law was introduced, the government tried to impose a red margarine before settling on a pale, off-white colour.
  6. The name ‘butter’ is thought to come from the Sanskrit word ‘bhutari’, which means “the enemy of evil spirits”.
  7. When concern about margarine arose in the early 20th Century, the US Government listed it as a “harmful drug” and restricted its sale before taxing it heavily and introducing a licensing system for the stores that wished to sell it.
  8. Before the corpse of a member of the Parsee religion is removed from its home, butter is traditionally smeared across its forehead and the dogs of the house are admitted. If the dogs lick the butter, it is supposed to be a sign that the deceased will go to heaven.

Butter Facts

Choose from the list below

  1. History
  2. Nutrition
  3. Production
  4. Trivia