ВМ-НВХ, част 64

I just want to add that I live in the French Alps (3 hours away from the valley where Price studied his Swiss natives in the 1930's) and the cows have just this week been let out to pasture again after being inside barns for the winter. Whilst they are inside, their butter is pale yellow (because they eat hay that has been cut during the autumn) and soon the butter will be turning deeper yellow as they start eating fresh green grass again.

The movement of livestock is called 'transhumance' - where they are moved up to alpine quarters in the summer and are kept inside barns for the winter months.

I do not think it is the butter's color alone that should be an indication of its nutritional value, however; pastured butter is pastured butter, obviously better than intensively raised butter but the butter WAP was studying was alpine butter; made from milk that has been taken from cows who are pastured on the high alpine plateaux of Europe where the cows are completely free to eat medicinal flowers and all manner of other plants never found in the typical farmer's field (the cows get to choose what they eat - they are self-medicators).

Our butter tastes like no other butter I have ever tasted before and it's color/texture is never static, it turns from white to deep yellow throughout the year and the locals eat it when it is deep yellow (in the summer when the cows are high up on the mountains), it is also traditional in these parts to eat cheese when the butter is white - all the french mountain artisan cheese would have been made with summer milk and stored for consumption in the winter, insuring that the population receive the best nutrients all year round, the most expensive cheese here is still made with 'alpage milk'.

When it is in the fridge it is rock hard and when left on the counter, soft as margarine. I would be suspicious of butter that is soft even when in the fridge.

I am not sure about the butter in the U.S. but I would look for a farm outfit where the butter is produced 'by hand' so-to-speak and changes color throughout the year. If there are any 'artisan' dairies where you live, buy cheese in the winter and eat yellow butter in the summer (preferably from cows grazed on mountainous terrain where they have rough pasture containing a variety of different wild plants to eat).

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I became a little skeptical of the gold butter craze when I read that the distinct orange color was from genetic selection for beta-carotene production in Guernsey cows.

From wikipedia: "The unique qualities of the milk produced by the Guernsey cow have made the breed world famous. The milk has a golden colour due to an exceptionally high content of beta carotene... From the 1950's to the early 1970's, Golden Guernsey trademark milk was sold in the US and Canada as a premium product. The golden color produced by beta carotene bound to the fat in the milk was the biggest marketing point and the source of the brand name. Only milk from Guernsey cows could be marketed under the Golden Guernsey trademark. The advent of homogenization and various changes to the way milk was priced and marketed, spelled the end of Golden Guernsey branded milk."

I've also seen first-hand that color varies greatly with diet, and diet varies greatly with season (despite our best efforts, grass just won't grow in the winter). This spring I started making my own butter from cream delivered by a local dairy. In early March when I made it for the very first time, the butter was disappointingly pale and even the same color as some Costco butter we had. Over the last few weeks, however, the butter has gotten noticeably darker. I think the cows have probably switched from cut and dried hay to fresh growing grass as the weather warmed up and they were able to pasture more. Price does make a point that the best butter was from cows in spring pasture.

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