Speaker 1: My name is Evil Longoria and I am my deraon
Speaker 1: and Welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores
Speaker 1: our past and present through food.
Speaker 2: On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
Speaker 2: of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
Speaker 3: So make yourself at home.
Speaker 1: Even drinking my Big Red, my last one in the fridge,
Speaker 1: I'm like freaking out. I'm like, wait a minute, it's
Speaker 1: my weekend luxury is one.
Speaker 3: Big Red because I don't drink them often. And then
Speaker 3: I'm like, wait, how do I have one left? You
Speaker 3: need to get on that. I need to get on it.
Speaker 1: Well, I will tell you what I did make yesterday, and.
Speaker 3: I'm so happy we're talking about it today. Is butter.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I want to hear all about your
Speaker 2: butter making process.
Speaker 1: It's not a process, you know. I'm a progressive why
Speaker 1: I have been making my own butter for years. Just
Speaker 1: when I heard it's like one ingredient, I was like,
Speaker 1: what I didn't know? It was just you know, heavy cream.
Speaker 1: Although French butter is cultured, right, is that what you
Speaker 1: say it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, French butter's cultured.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna start doing that where I culture it
Speaker 1: and then shake it because all you do. I got
Speaker 1: a butter turn thing from Amazon. I was like the
Speaker 1: worst thing ever. You just get a jar, like a
Speaker 1: big old Mason jar. I pour a whole little carton
Speaker 1: like the little cartons of heavy cream, and you shake
Speaker 1: it in that jar for about fifteen minutes. And I'll
Speaker 1: watch a TV show, I'll be watching a documentary and
Speaker 1: I just shake it and it turns into butter. And
Speaker 1: if my nephews and nieces are here, I make them
Speaker 1: take turns like you go five minutes and you hold
Speaker 1: it five minutes.
Speaker 3: And then because Thanksgiving, I make.
Speaker 1: A lot of butter, and so I need like extra shakers,
Speaker 1: but that's it. And then I put honey if I
Speaker 1: want honey butter for biscuits, and I put Garlicok, if
Speaker 1: I want garlic butter for a stack, I put salted
Speaker 1: you know, obviously salted butter. But in France they culture
Speaker 1: it and so cultured butter. You know, it just requires
Speaker 1: high quality heavy cream and a live bacteria, so usually
Speaker 1: yogurt butter milk, and that creates this like tangy rich butter.
Speaker 1: And what you do is you mix the heavy cream
Speaker 1: with yogurt or whatever you know, I use you. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna use yogurt, plain yogurt, and you leave it out
Speaker 1: for forty eight hours. But like forty eight hours seems
Speaker 1: to be the sweet spot. And those live active cultures
Speaker 1: makes it better.
Speaker 3: That sounds so good.
Speaker 2: And how do when you shake it, is it room
Speaker 2: temperature or is it chilled?
Speaker 3: Well, if I.
Speaker 2: Culture it, it'll be room temperature, okay, so you don't
Speaker 2: refrigerate it.
Speaker 1: Then once you shake it and it's like butter, you
Speaker 1: rinse out the butter milk that comes off of it.
Speaker 1: It's like really really milky water and you're left with
Speaker 1: this butter and you really have to squeeze out all
Speaker 1: that water.
Speaker 3: And that's how it does and go rantsid. If you leave.
Speaker 1: Water in it, it can go rancid pretty fast.
Speaker 3: I have a butterbell on my counter.
Speaker 1: I don't put I don't put my butter in the
Speaker 1: fridge saying steak for the counter.
Speaker 2: I have a butterbell and I love that thing. It's
Speaker 2: the coolest thing. It keeps it fresh and spreadable. Because
Speaker 2: the spreadable butters that we use are so processed here
Speaker 2: in the US that it's like it's not good that
Speaker 2: it's that spreadable. If it's cold and it's spreadable, there's
Speaker 2: some it's not just butter. There's something else in there
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, Valentine's is around the corner, and I just want
Speaker 1: to say to you my day.
Speaker 3: You're my butter.
Speaker 2: Half, you're my buttery.
Speaker 3: We are butter together, my friend. So speak of Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2: My anniversary, my wedding anniversary is November seventeenth, which is
Speaker 2: also National Butter Day.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, is it always November seventeenth or does
Speaker 1: it move Butter Day?
Speaker 2: It's always no November seventeenth. I just realized. I just
Speaker 2: learned this, and I love that. It's like, now I
Speaker 2: have two.
Speaker 3: Things to celebrate, to celebrate.
Speaker 1: I love all the butter idioms, like butter, you better
Speaker 1: butter them up before you ask.
Speaker 2: It's so funny butter fingers. When someone's clumsy who drops
Speaker 2: things all the time. I'm a total butter fingers. I'm
Speaker 2: quite quite a klutz, quite a glutz. So let's talk
Speaker 2: about where butter began.
Speaker 1: Okay, butter had to begin once we started, I guess
Speaker 1: hurting animals because it had to come from milk. So
Speaker 1: so it wasn't that long ago. How long ago was
Speaker 1: it and who should we applaud for this amazing invention?
Speaker 2: It was a bird long Yeah, it was a long
Speaker 2: time ago, like ten thousand years ago, like in the
Speaker 2: Fertile Crescent, right, So just like you said, yeah, early
Speaker 2: herders they realized, Okay, milk isn't something that you just drink, right,
Speaker 2: Milk could transform And they realized when they were trying
Speaker 2: to keep this butter, you know, fresh, they were putting
Speaker 2: it in animals skins and transporting it and this movement
Speaker 2: right when you know your your animal skin is full
Speaker 2: of milk and you're putting it on your animal, and
Speaker 2: the movement, the shake, it naturally made the fat separate
Speaker 2: from the cream right from the liquid, and it sort
Speaker 2: of clumped together, so just the way that you make it.
Speaker 3: So this is how they realized.
Speaker 2: So butter wasn't really invented, it was discovered.
Speaker 3: Well, the Fertile percent is also.
Speaker 1: Like that that boomerang shape region in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: which is like modern day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine,
Speaker 1: parts of Turkey, so like that that like basically the
Speaker 1: cradle of civilization, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: birthplace of agriculture, right, everything everything, So of course butter
Speaker 1: was discovered there as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly exactly, and it was really valuable. Like the
Speaker 2: value of the butter was recognized right away because it
Speaker 2: was riching calories, it lasted a lot longer than milk,
Speaker 2: and this was of course before refrigeration. It was easy
Speaker 2: to carry. So from the very beginning it's like, oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 3: Butter is valuable.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then when did butter, I guess over time take
Speaker 1: on a I guess a deeper meaning like it did
Speaker 1: it ever become sacred or like ritual in some places?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in India, especially ghe, which is this clarified butter. Right,
Speaker 2: you separate the fats from the from the solids and
Speaker 2: then so the gee it's the milk solids are then caramelized,
Speaker 2: and so in India they start using things.
Speaker 3: Like ghe in rituals.
Speaker 2: And in northern Europe it signified prosperity and they used
Speaker 2: to make ornate sculptures and just for nomadic cultures around
Speaker 2: the world, it represented mobility and survival, and eventually it
Speaker 2: became one of the defining flavors of global trade and
Speaker 2: in tables around the world, right, because everybody's just butter.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know some places like you know, like
Speaker 2: Italy that you see more olive oil, right, but still
Speaker 2: like butter is really central to tables around the world.
Speaker 1: Doing searching for France when you're talking about olive oil.
Speaker 1: I made the mistake. We were in Provence, in the
Speaker 1: south of France, and I said, uh, he was cooking something,
Speaker 1: and I go let me, yes, butter, because I associate
Speaker 1: France with butter. And he was like, no, only the
Speaker 1: north is butter, you know, north Paris and north of
Speaker 1: Paris is butter.
Speaker 3: The rest of France is olive oil.
Speaker 1: And I was like Mediterranean, yeah, which is funny because
Speaker 1: I was like, I always just think everything in France
Speaker 1: is cooked in butter.
Speaker 2: A lot, but maybe yeah, not everything, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: there's even like so many myths and legends around butters, right,
Speaker 2: And so like we said, it was this ritual substance
Speaker 2: embedded in these you know, fertility and abundance and and
Speaker 2: I love this idea of like in Hindu traditions they
Speaker 2: use that ghi for you know, for for rituals.
Speaker 3: And the god, Yes, Krishna.
Speaker 1: I was in India and saw a lot of krishnas O.
Speaker 3: I've never been to India, but I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 3: find butter.
Speaker 1: It was a big well ghee or yes, yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the ge. It's the ge. What was it
Speaker 3: used for?
Speaker 1: GHI?
Speaker 2: So they use it for cooking, but they also use
Speaker 2: in rituals and Krishna, the god Krishna is described in
Speaker 2: devotional literature as stealing butter as a child. So it's
Speaker 2: used in ceremonies, you know, as an offering.
Speaker 3: So it's used a.
Speaker 2: Lot in Southeast Asia, and even in Tibetan Buddhist tradition,
Speaker 2: they use butter to create these ritual sculpture called tormas,
Speaker 2: and they displayed these they would made them out of
Speaker 2: butter and roasted barley and these are just they transformed
Speaker 2: them into these sacred offerings as the symbol food for
Speaker 2: for deities and spirits. And so it's sort of central.
Speaker 1: I will say, if it's not French butter, the second
Speaker 1: one that I that comes close other than my own
Speaker 1: is Irish butter. I don't know why, Like does Ireland
Speaker 1: do something different? They also kind of have this ritual
Speaker 1: religious thing behind butter.
Speaker 2: Too, right, Yeah, Ireland really has an interesting history. They
Speaker 2: have like some really ancient butters have been discovered in Ireland,
Speaker 2: something called bog butter, and it's like like two thousand
Speaker 2: year old butters have been discovered. So they put them
Speaker 2: in these like animal skins or clay pots or something
Speaker 2: and bury them in peat and so it's like this
Speaker 2: moss and it would kind of transform them into like
Speaker 2: a sort of waxy substance, and it represents these stored
Speaker 2: labor and wealth. And people sometimes used to hide it
Speaker 2: because it was so valuable, like so that nobody else
Speaker 2: would steal them, and also to preserve them underground.
Speaker 1: So Latin America because we're not a big butter I
Speaker 1: mean I think we are in Texas because we have
Speaker 1: flower tortillas and like, let me tell you something, and
Speaker 1: flower tortilla with French butter in the morning, there's nothing better.
Speaker 3: My son does that all the time. He's like, you know,
Speaker 3: gett on a darbia but with French butter. That's so funny.
Speaker 2: Well there's that Texas better than the fan Furia's butter. Yeah,
Speaker 2: good butter. There are ranches firm that's a good butter.
Speaker 3: Fan Furia. But in Latin America.
Speaker 1: It was only because of colonialism that that butter arrived.
Speaker 3: It never really took off.
Speaker 2: It didn't take off. We don't really see it in
Speaker 2: native cosmologies like we do in other parts of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we see it in.
Speaker 3: The in the Pandulce.
Speaker 2: We did a whole Bandulte episode and we talked a
Speaker 2: little bit about better there, but we don't really see
Speaker 2: it again.
Speaker 1: A lot of the Banducee was influenced by the French bakeries. Yes,
Speaker 1: papers in Mexico, so they brought their.
Speaker 3: Butter with them.
Speaker 2: In Ireland and Scotland, early modern folklore records, there was
Speaker 2: this belief that butter production could be harmed by witches
Speaker 2: or fairies.
Speaker 3: So if butter didn't churn, they would.
Speaker 2: Use these productive practices that just you know, placing an
Speaker 2: iron near churns or were signing prayers during churning just
Speaker 2: to make sure that the butter was okay.
Speaker 3: You knew you had a witch in your house. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was valuable.
Speaker 1: You said it was pretty valuable, So it was obviously
Speaker 1: traded that had value.
Speaker 3: It was super valuable.
Speaker 2: Like by the Middle Ages in Europe, butter was just
Speaker 2: this major commodity it was packed in barrels tax traded
Speaker 2: across Ireland and Scandinavian, you know, Normandy. There were trading
Speaker 2: ports in northern Europe that had entire markets devoted, you know,
Speaker 2: just to butter. But even like before that in ancient India,
Speaker 2: in Egypt, it was a symbol of wealth, right, and
Speaker 2: these butters were export or imported from cooler regions and
Speaker 2: it was prized for medicine and ritual use.
Speaker 3: So they've been you know, butter is something.
Speaker 2: That has been traded at scale for literally thousands of years.
Speaker 3: So when did we start using it in baking? Because
Speaker 3: that was a good idea, Yes, that was a really
Speaker 3: good idea. I us that's what I think of butter.
Speaker 3: I think baking.
Speaker 2: So we start seeing it in baking around the ninth
Speaker 2: century or so in medieval Europe we start seeing it,
Speaker 2: you know, butter. You know, monks and town bakers they
Speaker 2: start incorporating butter into tarts and cakes and they would
Speaker 2: mix it often with like dried fruits or nuts or
Speaker 2: you know, honey, and this butter added like not only flavor,
Speaker 2: which we know butter is so Liverpool, but richness and
Speaker 2: moisture that other animal fats like lard or other you know,
Speaker 2: animal fats couldn't, and the butter allowed bakers to create
Speaker 2: just lighter and flakyar pastries. And then the North and
Speaker 2: Northern Europe dairy really thrived, so they sort of let
Speaker 2: the lead the way, and then French bakers refine these techniques.
Speaker 2: So we start seeing associating French pastries with you know,
Speaker 2: croissants and just beautiful tarts and just this just deliciousness.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I bake, I make my like today
Speaker 1: it's Sundays for me or like the food prep.
Speaker 3: For the week.
Speaker 1: I make my chodal beans which will turn into refrent beans.
Speaker 1: I make my creamer, my coffee creamer, I make my butter,
Speaker 1: and I make my bread, and the whole house every
Speaker 1: Sunday just smells like butter.
Speaker 3: Gosh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so butter just transformed every day baked goods into
Speaker 2: delicious treats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we covered some of this, we covered some
Speaker 1: of this in our earlier in the season. But when
Speaker 1: pastry shops first open, the oldest one being in Paris,
Speaker 1: the pastry chef of Louis the fifteenth and you know,
Speaker 1: when the monarchy fell, all of these amazing talented artisanal
Speaker 1: people like needed to do something, so they ended up
Speaker 1: opening shops. The chocolate tear opened a shop, the baker
Speaker 1: opened a shop, the chef opened a restaurant because it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 3: Before that in the monarchy.
Speaker 2: Lots to do with butter, yeah, and also just just
Speaker 2: really quickly, like the banavedias, they feed sort of everyday staples,
Speaker 2: right that have my gets and you know rolls, just
Speaker 2: staples that feed.
Speaker 3: A community based.
Speaker 2: Pastry shops are much more indulgent things with butter, like
Speaker 2: croissants and night claires and like things that are butter
Speaker 2: full and beautiful as well. It's like when you look
Speaker 2: at a little fruit tart, it's it's a work of art.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So who really like who brought I guess
Speaker 1: who elevated baking to high art?
Speaker 3: Because when you go to France, like one.
Speaker 1: Of these concoctions at one of the highest you know,
Speaker 1: patisseries or pastry shops can run like forty dollars. I mean,
Speaker 1: like for this one little gorgeous little thing. I remember
Speaker 1: I paid eighty five dollars for this like Mango creation. Like,
Speaker 1: who who said I'm gonna elevate baking to high art?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this guy. His name is Marie Antoine Karem.
Speaker 2: He's also known as Antonym Karem. And he is such
Speaker 2: an interesting character, right, he was like a true rags
Speaker 2: to riches story. He was born in seventeen eighty three.
Speaker 2: He was born in the slums of Paris. They believed
Speaker 2: that he was one of twenty three children. And in
Speaker 2: when he was nine years old during the French Revolution,
Speaker 2: and he was taken in by the owner of a
Speaker 2: chop house, right, a top house near the gaillotine.
Speaker 3: What's it like a meat? Like a steak like they
Speaker 3: would they would butchery, but like a butchery, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: And he he washed dishes right in exchange for a
Speaker 2: roof over his head. And when he turned sixteen, he
Speaker 2: was apprenticing at a patisserie. Right, so he was apprenticing
Speaker 2: his super bright. His boss encouraged him to get an education.
Speaker 2: He taught himself to read and write, and he would
Speaker 2: go to the library and he would study architecture and
Speaker 2: classical you know, arches like Greek architecture and Roman architecture
Speaker 2: and columns, and he started recreating this architectural forms with
Speaker 2: sugar and pastry.
Speaker 3: Wow, which of.
Speaker 2: Course, butter is what helps you know, keep these things,
Speaker 2: you know, give things their shape and their texture and
Speaker 2: their wow, their their their shininess and everything. And so
Speaker 2: he started staging thees in window displays and eventually he
Speaker 2: opened up his own pastry shop. He was reviewed by
Speaker 2: Grimaud de la Arronier. We talked about him in our
Speaker 2: Food Critics episode. He called his pastries exquisite in crisp
Speaker 2: to perfection.
Speaker 1: And he didn't just open anyway. He opened near Plus Bondome,
Speaker 1: which is like to the spot today. It's where the
Speaker 1: it's carl it is. It's like it's one of the
Speaker 1: most famous plazas and so it's so it's it's so
Speaker 1: interesting that in the seventeen hundreds, you know, this was
Speaker 1: where his shop was.
Speaker 2: Wow, even then it was the place he was so
Speaker 2: you know, his art. He elevated, you know, food to
Speaker 2: this fine art. And he's the one that really transformed us.
Speaker 2: He even made Napoleon's wedding cake. Like he invented the
Speaker 2: pastry bag. He illustrated his own cookbooks. He claimed to
Speaker 2: have invented the shoe pastry and volevants and perfect souit
Speaker 2: fls like you know, he he and he was also
Speaker 2: the first chef to gain wealth and fame through publishing
Speaker 2: and through his through his creations. And so yeah, we
Speaker 2: can the eighty dollars pastry that you got, you could,
Speaker 2: you could, You could thank Karrem for that.
Speaker 3: I will bank Koram for that price as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pastry is only good as it's butter, not only
Speaker 1: it's ingredients.
Speaker 3: But like, really the real star is butter. It is.
Speaker 2: It is my favorite bakery in la Is Petti Grand
Speaker 2: bu Lingerie in Santa Monica, owned by a really good
Speaker 2: friend of mine.
Speaker 3: Her stuff is unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Last week I had to sit down with my friend
Speaker 2: Clemonsta Loots from the Santa Monica bakery pettigran Bulanerie. We
Speaker 2: talked about the current political climate, her presence in the community,
Speaker 2: and she taps into bread's long history of labor care
Speaker 2: and quiet revolution.
Speaker 3: Today I'm talking to her about butter.
Speaker 2: So why is butter such a foundational ingredient in baking,
Speaker 2: especially compared to oils or margarine.
Speaker 4: So the reason that I prefer butter over margarine is
Speaker 4: because butter contains lactose, which contains sugar, which creates drowning,
Speaker 4: which creates the Mayas reaction, which gives you a depth
Speaker 4: of flavor and color that you cannot get from a
Speaker 4: hydrogenated fat. So margarine and shortening are hydrogenated, which means
Speaker 4: that there are oils with oil does not contain any water.
Speaker 4: Oils that are hydrogenated partially or fully and go from
Speaker 4: liquid to solid. But oils lack the ability to really
Speaker 4: brown in the same way that butter does and has
Speaker 4: a very different mouth feel because they don't contain water.
Speaker 4: So what butter does is because butter is made of
Speaker 4: eighty to eighty four to sometimes eighty six percent fat
Speaker 4: and the remaining part being water and milk solids. When
Speaker 4: it reaches your tongue, butter can melt at a certain
Speaker 4: temperature and with a certain mouthfeel that you cannot recreate
Speaker 4: with solid fats. So when you're consuming a product that
Speaker 4: has margarine or shortening, it can't really melt. It just
Speaker 4: kind of coats your mouth rather than sort of having
Speaker 4: those properties that butter has.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, that makes perfect sense. I never really understood
Speaker 2: the why that makes.
Speaker 4: Perfect If you have like a shortening butter cream, it
Speaker 4: just kind of sticks to the roof of your mouth
Speaker 4: a little bit and the sugar crystallizes a lot because
Speaker 4: it can't dissolve as well.
Speaker 2: Your croissants are the best croissants ever, the most amazing.
Speaker 2: So can you walk us through the steps of the
Speaker 2: lamination and how laminated dough turns butter into these edible amazingly.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, oh, I love talking about this because making
Speaker 4: clos is actually not that difficult.
Speaker 3: It starts for us.
Speaker 4: It's a three day process that starts with a sponge
Speaker 4: with like whole grain flowers, yeast and flour and water.
Speaker 4: And then the next day we mix our dough with
Speaker 4: more whole grains, bread, flour, water, yeast. We use organic
Speaker 4: dark brown sugar and that preferment, and then we lay
Speaker 4: it out in a pan. We do this thirty two
Speaker 4: times on most days, and then we put in a
Speaker 4: kilo block of butter. And the butter that we use
Speaker 4: is eighty two percent fat, and it's super important because
Speaker 4: some butters that are lower in fat, like your regular
Speaker 4: typical grocery store butter, has too much water content. And
Speaker 4: then when you go to laminate, which is the process
Speaker 4: of putting the butter on top of the dough, folding it,
Speaker 4: rolling it out, folding it, rolling it out, folding it,
Speaker 4: rolling it out. If it has too much water content,
Speaker 4: it will melt too quickly and so then the butter
Speaker 4: will seep into the dough and not give you those
Speaker 4: sustainct layers that are needed to make a really beautiful
Speaker 4: clissant that has a clear lamination. So we use a
Speaker 4: butter that's eighty two percent. We have tried using a
Speaker 4: butter that's a higher fat, because some of the butters
Speaker 4: we love because of how they're produced, are delicious, but
Speaker 4: too high a fat makes a butter that's too brittle
Speaker 4: and we'll crack and will break those layers. So we're
Speaker 4: in the process of looking for a different kind of
Speaker 4: butter because we love the butter we use.
Speaker 3: It's ec needs.
Speaker 4: From France, but unfortunately it's now fifty two percent owned
Speaker 4: by a big Chinese conglomerate rather than being entirely farmer owned.
Speaker 4: So you know, it's one of those decisions that we're
Speaker 4: playing with, and we'd love to start our own butterer company,
Speaker 4: but more on that later, and gosh, yeah, it's a
Speaker 4: very long term project. But the butter, most importantly is cultured.
Speaker 4: So when you're at the grocery store and you see
Speaker 4: sweet cream. It doesn't mean that this sugar added to it.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that the cow was nicer. It means
Speaker 4: that it's not cultured. So typically in Europe, butter is
Speaker 4: cultured from cream, is churned from cream that has been cultured.
Speaker 4: So the same kind of processes making yogurt, whereabout whereby
Speaker 4: you add cultures to the cream or the milk. In
Speaker 4: this case it's cream because it's butter, and then it's
Speaker 4: churned into butter and that adds a really really good
Speaker 4: like depth of flavor and tendiness, and it extends the
Speaker 4: shelf life of the butter as well because of its acidity.
Speaker 3: Guess what A lot of people don't know this. Croissants
Speaker 3: roots aren't French. Yeah, I did not know this.
Speaker 1: It's so many times in Paris I'm passing by a
Speaker 1: bakery and it'll say a Vienna luise in Paris, which
Speaker 1: it's basically a lingerie from.
Speaker 3: Vienna.
Speaker 1: Because the original person that really introduced this Viennese baking
Speaker 1: was in Paris was Austrian and so I think his
Speaker 1: name was August Zang, right, August Sang. He popularized the
Speaker 1: pastry which was it and it was a crescent. It
Speaker 1: was a crescent shaped pastry made with a lot of
Speaker 1: butter or lard, but his was sometimes sweetened with almonds
Speaker 1: and sugar. And so that's the legend, is that the
Speaker 1: kip fule was invented in in Sienna after the siege
Speaker 1: of Vienna and a baker up early to start breaking
Speaker 1: he heard the Ottomans tunneling under the city and sounded
Speaker 1: the alarm. So to celebrate the victory, baker's shaped the
Speaker 1: pastry like the crescent.
Speaker 3: Moon on the Ottoman flag. I don't know if it's true,
Speaker 3: but it is a good story. It's a really good story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then but then this well, this food history in
Speaker 1: Jim Chevalier says, the croissant was born the moment that
Speaker 1: kip fell. The kip fell made its way to France,
Speaker 1: and then it met puff pastry and now and then
Speaker 1: it transformed into something new. So technically, like the shape
Speaker 1: and the butter, and like the fact that it was
Speaker 1: a pastry was Austrian. But this Austrian businessman August saying,
Speaker 1: he opened uh Viennese bakery in Paris, and he was
Speaker 1: like this marketing genius and he did the window displays
Speaker 1: and the newspaper Rads. He patented the steam oven that
Speaker 1: gave pastries that that golden shin. That's why when I
Speaker 1: make my my bag, adds, I put, Uh, what is
Speaker 1: it a.
Speaker 3: Pan of water? Trade water that just steams inside.
Speaker 1: And that gives you the crispy outside on your when
Speaker 1: your back at So Parisians went wild for these kit fells,
Speaker 1: and then bakeries all over we're imitating them.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the croissant became a Parisian breakfast staple.
Speaker 3: Even Charles Dickens raved about them on a visit to Paris.
Speaker 2: God, I love a good croissant. It's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know what I want to know, how
Speaker 1: did industrialization or the you know, the indust the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution change butter production.
Speaker 3: It changed everything where the Industrial Revolution changed everything.
Speaker 2: So, before industrialization, butter was very hands on, very small scale.
Speaker 2: You know, farmers or households would turn there our own
Speaker 2: creamy they you know.
Speaker 1: They would have the thing you would see the butter
Speaker 1: maids exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some butter maids exactly, just making enough for their
Speaker 2: family or to sell at a local market. And the
Speaker 2: flavor was always different depending on the season, depending on
Speaker 2: what the.
Speaker 3: Cows and they say.
Speaker 1: The reason why French butter tastes so amazing, and not
Speaker 1: only French butter, it's from Brittany and Normandy, like it's
Speaker 1: from the north of France, is because it's that grass
Speaker 1: that the cows eat in the north. So you could
Speaker 1: have the same cow eat something else in the south
Speaker 1: and it's not as good as the butter in the
Speaker 1: north of France. So it does that makes sense that
Speaker 1: the flavor buried with the season, with the cow, with
Speaker 1: the grass.
Speaker 3: It greed.
Speaker 1: I mean, you taste, you taste it, the grass, you
Speaker 1: taste the landscape. You should be able to taste the lands.
Speaker 1: You should be We don't in the United States, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: in France you can taste. You're like, hmm, this smells
Speaker 1: like tastes like rain. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, totally for sure.
Speaker 1: It So then they made these mechanical churns so that
Speaker 1: the separation could be faster and more efficient, and then
Speaker 1: they could make butter and these massive quantities.
Speaker 3: But then why did they start refrigerating it?
Speaker 2: Well, because it was just it was it was I
Speaker 2: wondered they started easy to transport it, Yeah, it just
Speaker 2: lasts longer, you know, to transfert it, and when when
Speaker 2: they started doing all of these separators and turns and
Speaker 2: all this butter was standardized package sold nationally internationally. So
Speaker 2: it also like it brought consistency, and you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of these small dairy farmers they just really couldn't
Speaker 2: compete with the sort of pane.
Speaker 1: Those traditional methods were abandoned, and then these regional flavors
Speaker 1: and textures were like lost because now it just became
Speaker 1: so mechanized.
Speaker 3: So wait, is this where the story of margarine begins.
Speaker 2: Nineteenth century for sure, So in the eighteen Sea Sties
Speaker 2: and berer Napoleon the third he was looking for cheap,
Speaker 2: shelf stable butter to substitute, you know, to feed his army,
Speaker 2: to be able to feed the working class because butter
Speaker 2: was expensive and butter spoiled really quickly. So a chemist
Speaker 2: named Hippolyte meg Murier invented oleomargarine. So evented this margarine
Speaker 2: from beef fat, milk and some multifiers, and it worked
Speaker 2: and its popularity spread. And then after the First World War,
Speaker 2: when animal fats were scarce, marjorie evolved from beef fats
Speaker 2: to vegetable oils, and then by the twentieth century, dairy
Speaker 2: farmers were fighting against margarine, and in the US there
Speaker 2: were laws required that margarine be sold without butter because
Speaker 2: it was hurting the dairy industry. So when you bought
Speaker 2: a pack of margarine, it came with a little packet
Speaker 2: of yellow dye. You would mix in the yellow diet home.
Speaker 2: What yeah, isn't that crazy? And Wisconsin was the last
Speaker 2: state to lift this colored margarine band in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: so it's not that long ago. And then after the
Speaker 2: Second World War, butter, I'm sorry, margarine was marketed as
Speaker 2: sort of modern and healthy, and in the US, butter
Speaker 2: was marketed as old fashioned, like margarin was the future.
Speaker 3: Margarine was process progress. Butter processed. It was, yes, it
Speaker 3: was sold.
Speaker 2: It was a highly processed but by the late you know,
Speaker 2: twentieth century, these sort of transfats and hydrogenated margins were
Speaker 2: lickd to heart disease. And then butter was back. Right,
Speaker 2: Butter is natural. But we're seeing it today too, with
Speaker 2: olive oil spreads and plant based butter and not based butter.
Speaker 2: And you know, but I don't know, there's nothing like
Speaker 2: the really good stuff.
Speaker 3: Now, there's no substitute for good butter. There's not.
Speaker 1: I encourage everybody make your own butter. I'll actually link
Speaker 1: my recipe here even though it's not and it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, shake some heavy cream. That's it, shakes for
Speaker 1: a long time and your I add flu de sail
Speaker 1: because I like that taste more than sea salt in
Speaker 1: my butter. I don't like sea Salt's a little too salty.
Speaker 1: I like honey. Like I said, I like garlic butter.
Speaker 1: You can add parsley. It's just it's so fun because
Speaker 1: then you start just making all kinds of butter.
Speaker 2: How long does it last when you have it out?
Speaker 2: When you make the butters, well, we go through it
Speaker 2: so fast, so I don't know. It's never made it
Speaker 2: to the it's never made.
Speaker 1: It's always empty, and I'm always having to make new butter,
Speaker 1: so I don't know how long it lasts. On the Conca,
Speaker 1: which is another Mexican pastry, does have French roots.
Speaker 3: So if you want to hear all about that, go
Speaker 3: back to season one. Listen to the Bandul's episode. It
Speaker 3: is so good.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for listening, and thank you to my
Speaker 1: butter half minday.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for listening, and yes, thank you to
Speaker 2: My Butter Half, My Taste, Butter, My Taste, Butter Date
Speaker 2: by Off Bye.
Speaker 1: Hungry for History is a hyphen media production in partnership
Speaker 1: with Iheart's Michael Burda podcast network.
Speaker 2: For more of your favorite shows, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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