8 Nutritional information
8.1 Health value
9 See also
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Etymology[edit]



Butter is often served for spreading on bread with a butter knife.
The word butter derives (via Germanic languages) from the Latin butyrum,[2] which is the latinisation of the Greek βούτυρον (bouturon).[3][4] This may have been a construction meaning "cow-cheese", from βοῦς (bous), "ox, cow"[5] + τυρός (turos), "cheese",[6] but perhaps this is a false etymology of a Scythian word.[7] Nevertheless, the earliest attested form of the second stem, turos ("cheese"), is the Mycenaean Greek tu-ro, written in Linear B syllabic script.[8] The root word persists in the name butyric acid, a compound found in rancid butter and dairy products such as Parmesan cheese.
In general use, the term "butter" refers to the spread dairy product when unqualified by other descriptors. The word commonly is used to describe puréed vegetable or seed & nut products such as peanut butter and almond butter. It is often applied to spread fruit products such as apple butter. Fats such as cocoa butter and shea butter that remain solid at room temperature are also known as "butters". In addition to the act of applying butter being called "to butter", non-dairy items that have a dairy butter consistency may use "butter' to call that consistency to mind, including food items such as maple butter and witch's butter and nonfood items such as baby bottom butter, hyena butter, and rock butter.
Production[edit]

Main article: Churning (butter)


Churning cream into butter using a hand held mixer.
Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules. These globules are surrounded by membranes made of phospholipids (fatty acid emulsifiers) and proteins, which prevent the fat in milk from pooling together into a single mass. Butter is produced by agitating cream, which damages these membranes and allows the milk fats to conjoin, separating from the other parts of the cream. Variations in the production method will create butters with different consistencies, mostly due to the butterfat composition in the finished product. Butter contains fat in three separate forms: free butterfat, butterfat crystals, and undamaged fat globules. In the finished product, different proportions of these forms result in different consistencies within the butter; butters with many crystals are harder than butters dominated by free fats.
Almost all commercially-made butter today begins with pasteurized cream, which is commonly heated to a relatively high temperature above 80 °C (180 °F). Before it is