Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Serving Butter
Anna Stockwell talks the art of the butter mountain, the old-timey accessories worth collecting, and, of course, butter yellow.
By Lila Allen
About 10 years ago, my mother—an expert hostess—adopted a very specific, very peculiar habit: only serving her guests butter hand-delivered from France. My mom is also the type of lady who gets most of her cheese from Trader Joe’s and who relishes a good find at TJ Maxx (hey, me too), so it’s not as if she’s stockpiling other rare gourmand accoutrements. Acquiring the butter, which she swears is better than any you can find here in the States, requires the help of a flight-attendant co-conspirator, and, of course, a refrigerated bag. I can confirm it’s very impressive to visitors, of which she has many. These days, everyone is feeling the pinch—but a tub of French butter is a luxury that elevates a tear of crusty bread from mundane to sublime, not only because it tastes delicious, but because there’s a good story behind it.
If you’re going to all that effort, it’d be foolish to offer your guests their spread in a humdrum vessel. The Butter Book, culinary whiz Anna Stockwell’s forthcoming bible of all things butter, details the many stylish ways to serve the good stuff—along with butter’s history, Anna’s recipes, and instructions on how to make your own. She and I caught up recently about how to serve it (butter mountains are still going strong, people!), the popularization of the coquillor, and the persistence of butter yellow.
Looking through the butter tools you detail in your book, it strikes me that many of them seem so old-fashioned. Maybe because there’s a slowness or ritualistic character to them (like the butter warmer and the coquillor). As somebody who has been steeped in butter(!) for the last year or two, what’s your take on how we’re feeling about butter—and the way it’s served—right now?
Yes, I love all the old-fashioned butter tools! And I love that they seem to be regaining popularity these days, thanks in part to brands like Gohar World who re-popularized the coquillor a couple years ago. How we’re feeling about butter right now is we’re all about it! Home cooks and restaurants and party planners are going big and bold with butter!
I’m sure my algorithm is biased toward butter after my two-plus years of lots of butter related searching on my phone... but I’m seeing butter continually pop up in my feed. It seems we’ve mostly moved past butter boards and are onto molded butter, butter sculptures, mounds of butter, and generally just BIG butter. It seems like every hip party has a tower of whipped or molded butter on the buffet, while many restaurants now offer (and charge for!) special butter service. Butter is being considered as a centerpiece, not as an afterthought, and honestly, I’m all about that.
For most of my lifetime, at least, Americans have had an ick when it comes to having butter sitting at room temperature. That seems to have changed, with butter crocks now being common commodities at boutique kitchen stores. What’s changed?
Just like you can taste and appreciate the flavors of a soft cheese better at room temperature, you can taste and appreciate the flavors of butter at room temperature. I think as people have become more aware of and appreciative of high-quality butters, they’re paying more attention to how best to serve it.
Can you tell me about a few of your favorite butter-serving implements—cutlery, crocks, display stands, presses, and so on? Where did you acquire them?
My favorite butter dish (which I found on Etsy during my butter tool research) is a vintage silver-plated covered shell butter dish with a little glass dish inside. It’s the perfect size to use for serving butter at the dinner table, and it keeps it guarded from my butter-loving cats. The easiest type to find are from the mid-century revival of the original Victorian trend of silver butter shells. They also make great caviar serving vessels.
For my everyday countertop butter storage, I use this deep ceramic butter dish with airtight lid that I bought after my two cats destroyed a succession of six different more traditionally shaped ceramic butter dishes. No matter how heavy or clever I thought it was, they eventually figured out how to knock off and break the lid of every butter dish except this one! Like I said, they love butter. And I love to keep butter on my counter at all times, so we had to find a solution. The airtight lid helps keep the butter fresh, and I like that the dish is big enough to fit a European-size block of butter. It’s not the cutest dish in the world but it has lasted three whole years now which is a record in my kitchen, so we’re sticking with it. And it keeps the fancy butter for me instead of the cats!
What are some of the most impressive butter displays you’ve encountered in your research and travels? (Any that a fellow butter enthusiast could re-create at home?)
I feel like I’ve been seeing some really great ones on Instagram recently, but I just went digging to try to find some photos for you and can’t find the ones I’m remembering, shoot. But as I said before, it’s all about BIG impact butter. Tall mountains of whipped butter—I teach you how to do this in my book and it’s a very good party trick to re-create at home. I saw somewhere a centerpiece built of many sticks of butter like a wall with candles sunk into the butter. Dramatic, but maybe a bit wasteful because really that’s a lot of butter. Sculptures made of butter are easy to re-create at home on a smaller scale using silicone molds (my method is in the book!) and are honestly so fun and charming. Why serve a stick of butter on your table ever again when you can serve butter shaped like a shell or a lemon or a cow? I now keep ready-made butter shells in my freezer to pull out for special guests.
I’ve got to know: Do you have a preferred butter?
I have several! I always have at least three types of butter on hand in my kitchen:
1.) A table butter, or what I keep on my counter for spreading on bread, topping pancakes or oatmeal, or adding a dab to this or that. Ideally this is a European-Style salted cultured butter. Depending how spendy I’m feeling and which grocery store I pop into, this will either be Isigny Ste Mere butter with sea salt crystals (a package of this is also one of my favorite hostess gifts to give!), Ploughgate Creamery Salted Cultured Butter, Vermont Creamery Salted Cultured Butter, or Kerrygold salted butter. Kerrygold isn’t cultured, but the grass-fed cream gives it a nice flavor boost worthy of being table butter!
2.) A savory cooking butter, or what I use to make sauces, baste steak or scallops, roast chicken, etc. Salted Kerrygold butter is my favorite for this.
3.) A baking butter, or an unsalted sweet cream butter for all-purpose baking. I go with whatever the grocery store brand organic version is for this, which for me means Hannaford’s organic unsalted butter. I keep backup in the freezer because you never want to discover you’re out of butter when the urge to bake cookies strikes.
Finally: Butter yellow. Here to stay, or a sizzle in the pan?
For fashion, a sizzle. For interiors, here to stay. Or at least simmer for quite a while still. ⌂
Loving the butter surge!
I have that silver butter shell but must admit I’d no idea what it was designed for, the spreader having gone the way of all things before it was mine. I use it to hold my fancy soap by my tub.