The Butter (Le Beurre)
BUTTER 🧈
19th century — The gold of French cuisine
Unsalted, lightly salted or salted, melted into a sauce, spread on a baguette or carefully folded into croissant dough: it’s hard to imagine French cuisine without butter.
Yet for centuries, France was divided between butter-based cooking in the north and oil-based cooking in the south. In major dairy regions such as Normandy and Brittany, butter gradually became an essential part of everyday cooking and a defining feature of regional cuisine.
During the 19th century, improvements in production and preservation techniques helped butter flourish and take on a major role in French gastronomy. Great chefs made it an essential ingredient: enriching sauces, elevating pastries and establishing it as one of the foundations of classic French cuisine.
Even today, France continues to preserve its many butter-making traditions. Some French butters even benefit from Protected Designation of Origin status, including Isigny butter and Charentes-Poitou butter, (my favorite butter brand is Bordier, and their seaweed flavor is to die for) recognized for their geographical origins and traditional production methods.
From a flaky croissant to a slice of fresh bread, butter has become inseparable from French indulgence.
Good bread, good butter… and a little taste of France.
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A NOTE FROM THE CREATOR 💌 Butter and I have a bit of a love story. 🫣 I highly recommend the butters from Maison Bordier. My absolute favourite is their Seaweed Butter (the flavour is incredible) but I also recommend trying their Espelette Pepper, Vanilla and Smoked butter. (If you’re visiting Paris, you can find almost their entire range at La Grande Épicerie on rue de Sèvres also they can vacium seal it for you to travel). For something easier to find, there’s also Isigny butter with Guérande salt crystals, which is just as delicious as it is perfect spread on a good baguette. And for an even easier supermarket option: Grand Fermage’s moulded butter with Noirmoutier sea salt crystals. Made in Vendée, affordable, and absolutely incredible on bread with fresh oysters. I’ll stop here because I could easily write another three pages on the subject. I’ll let you taste them for yourself.
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