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Can you imagine any sandwich without
the yummy yellow spread? Of course, the yummy yellow spread now
comes in myriad forms and in different shades. We are talking about
the humble rich butter. Butter is used as a spread and as cooking
fat. About one-third of the world’s milk production is devoted
making butter.
Butter is a solid emulsion of fat globules, water and inorganic
salts, yellow to white in color. It is produced by churning cream.
Good quality butter is uniformly firm, waxy and easy to slice and
spread.
The origin (History)
When and where butter originated from is a question that remains
unanswered till today. It is presumed that it dates back to the
prehistoric stages of animal husbandry. Butter was mainly produced
by churning cow’s milk. Whipped butter is made by whipping air or
nitrogen gas into soft butter. For a long time, butter making was a
laborious task done by farm hands. However, with the advent of the
cream separator in the late nineteenth century, the manufacture of
butter moved from the farm to the factory. |
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With the introduction of continuous butter making after World War II,
there was a significant rise in the production of butter. Continuous
butter making is done following either of two methods. In the first
method, churning of normal cream is accelerated, while the second
method involves utilization of re-separated high-fat cream.
Color and richness
It is thanks to carotene and other fat-soluble pigments in the fat
that butter gets its color. Butter, has a high content of
butterfat or milk fat (about eighty per cent), but it is low in
protein. It is a high-energy food that contains approximately 715
calories per 100 grams. Butter has a good amount of vitamin A, as
well as small amounts of calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D.
Peanut Butter And Jelly
While on the topic of butter, it would be unfair to leave out the
hot favorite peanut butter. Peanut butter and jelly
sandwich is an all time favorite. How peanut butter first came
into being is an interesting story. Like Coca Cola, peanut butter
too was first as a medicine. There is a story that an American
physician used peanut ground into paste to treat patients who had
dental problems. His reasoning was that since they had difficulty
chewing meat, the protein in the peanut would be a healthy
substitute. The physician’s creation was made in the year 1890,
according to some sources. However, it was John Harvey Kellogg who
first obtained a patent for peanut five years later, in 1895.
Food historians are aware that during World War II both peanut
butter and jelly were part of the U.S. military's rations. This
lead to the speculation that jelly might have been added to the
peanut butter by the American GIs to make it easier to eat. Some
historians claim that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was
itself on military ration lists. No matter how it started, peanut
butter and jelly sandwiches have been hugely popular. According to a
National Peanut Board report, an average American kid eats 1,500
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before she or he graduates high
school.
Peanut butter became extremely popular in early twentieth century.
It was introduced to the masses at the St. Louis World’s Fair in
1904, by one C. H. Sumner. Modern peanut butter made its appearance
in the 1920s, when it was improvised upon to give it a longer shelf
life. This was done by one Joseph Rosefield. His method seemed to
have caught on and the peanut butter became a permanent breakfast
item in homes. |
