Sweet butter Spruce Eats: What Is Sweet Cream Butter? Linnea Covington has been writing about food for over a decade.

From farmers’ markets to award-winning restaurants, if the eats prove good, she’s there, often trailed by her two young boys. In essence sweet cream butter is what most people think of when they think about butter. It’s the sticks found in the side door of many refrigerators, the pats of butter given at diners and one of the main ingredients in shortbread. To make sweet cream butter, cream gets sterilized with heat until the fats break away from the liquid, otherwise known as butterfat and buttermilk. Once the two have separated, the thick fat on top gets churned or agitated in a different container until it forms a solid mass. Butter makers wash the solids, and press until all liquid has been extracted, creating the end product consumers know as butter.

When a recipe calls for butter don’t hesitate to reach for a stick of sweet cream butter. It’s probably the only butter gracing most American refrigerator shelves, anyway. What Does Sweet Cream Butter Taste Like? The flavor of plain sweet cream butter has notes of warm grass and hay-laced milk, though the overall profile remains mild.

When melted down the flavor can intensify, and if browned in a saucepan, the sweet cream butter becomes deeper in color with caramel and honey notes on the tongue. The fat of the butter can enhance other aspects too, drawing out sugars, salt and heat. Sweet cream butter goes well on all sorts of foods as it is, without adding too much richness. To enhance a dish or make baked goods butter is a must. Use this ingredient in cooking, baking and to garnish a sandwich, or try it out in one of these recipes. Most of the butter found in American markets is sweet cream butter. Check out the packaging to confirm, and make sure to pick out salted or unsalted based on preferences.