Canadians have fallen hard for artisan cheese. Will we heap the same adoration on butter?
Not this year, if two butter competitions are any indication.
The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair just wrapped up judging for its competition. It attracted five salted butter entries, five unsalted butters and two cultured butters.
These 12 butters came from just five companies: Parmalat Canada, Dairytown Products, Gay Lea Foods Co-operative, Stirling Creamery and Thornloe Cheese.
Winners will be unveiled when the fair opens Friday, but we can reveal that Gay Lea's unsalted butter was named grand champion, making it Canada's top butter.
Meanwhile, in Belleville, the British Empire Cheese Competition is still accepting salted and unsalted butters. It usually draws just half a dozen butter entries.
And yet, there are a tiny but growing number of small-scale, organic or artisan butters to be found at cheesemongers, specialty shops and health food stores. Restaurants like the one at Langdon Hall Country House Hotel and Spa in Cambridge have created buzz for their in-house butters. Even mainstream bricks of butter produce interesting taste variations.
"The coming of butter is an everyday miracle," writes American author Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. "Milkfat is indeed a portion of the sun's energy, captured by the grasses of the field and repackaged by the cow in scattered, microscopic globules. Churning milk or cream damages the globules and frees their fat to stick together in ever larger masses, which we eventually sieve into the golden hoard that imparts a warm, sweet richness to many foods."
Interesting.
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