On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. Most frequently made from cow’s milk, butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Butter butter icing a water-in-oil emulsion resulting from an inversion of the cream, where the milk proteins are the emulsifiers.

It generally has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. Churning cream into butter using a hand-held mixer. Unhomogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in microscopic globules. Churning produces small butter grains floating in the water-based portion of the cream. This watery liquid is called buttermilk—although the buttermilk most common today is instead a directly fermented skimmed milk. Butterfat is a mixture of triglyceride, a triester derived from glycerol and three of any of several fatty acid groups.

Chart of milk products and production relationships, including butter. Before modern factory butter making, cream was usually collected from several milkings and was therefore several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into butter. Butter made from a fermented cream is known as cultured butter. Dairy products are often pasteurized during production to kill pathogenic bacteria and other microbes. Butter made from pasteurized fresh cream is called sweet cream butter.

Cultured butter is preferred throughout continental Europe, while sweet cream butter dominates in the United States and the United Kingdom. Cultured butter is sometimes labeled “European-style” butter in the United States, although cultured butter is made and sold by some, especially Amish, dairies. Commercial raw cream butter is virtually unheard of in the United States. Clarified butter has almost all of its water and milk solids removed, leaving almost-pure butterfat. At the top, whey proteins form a skin, which is removed. This process flavors the ghee, and also produces antioxidants that help protect it from rancidity. Because of this, ghee can be kept for six to eight months under normal conditions.

Whey butter may be made from whey cream. Whey cream and butter have a lower fat content and taste more salty, tangy and “cheesy”. Ancient techniques were still practiced in the early 20th century. Elaine Khosrova traces the butter’s invention back to Neolithic-era Africa 8,000 B. In the Mediterranean climate, unclarified butter spoils quickly, unlike cheese, so it is not a practical method of preserving the nutrients of milk.

The ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to have considered butter a food fit more for the northern barbarians. In the cooler climates of northern Europe, people could store butter longer before it spoiled. Scandinavia has the oldest tradition in Europe of butter export trade, dating at least to the 12th century. In antiquity, butter was used for fuel in lamps, as a substitute for oil. The Butter Tower of Rouen Cathedral was erected in the early 16th century when Archbishop Georges d’Amboise authorized the burning of butter during Lent, instead of oil, which was scarce at the time. Like Ireland, France became well known for its butter, particularly in Normandy and Brittany. Butter consumption in London in the mid 1840s was estimated at 15,357 tons annually.

Gustaf de Laval’s centrifugal cream separator sped up the butter-making process. Until the 19th century, the vast majority of butter was made by hand, on farms. The first butter factories appeared in the United States in the early 1860s, after the successful introduction of cheese factories a decade earlier. Butter also provided extra income to farm families. They used wood presses with carved decoration to press butter into pucks or small bricks to sell at nearby markets or general stores. The decoration identified the farm that produced the butter.