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Salt and Butter Tasting Add/Read Comments
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A trek over to Johanna's for a meet-up with Jeanne, Xochitl and first-time meet with Bill and Moira. A blind tasting of butter, followed by a comparison of various salts and then a few sweet nibbles to conclude.
Are there professional butter tasters? Conversation opened with the very same query and moved on to the lexicon they would use in descriptions; would it be like a wine taster with notes covering aroma, body, and the like? What about creaminess, saltiness, 'meltibility'?
It wasn't easy to come up with original 'tasting notes'. Some were very similar, one had the colour of Leicester cheese, one had a really horrid aroma. But the out-and-out favourite, universally agreed on I think, was the Bridel Brittany Butter With Sea Salt, followed by a farmhouse butter from Markhams Farm. Country Life unsalted was terrible with my notes reporting an aroma of cheap margarine. The unsalted Bridel is one I use occassionally; my 'most purchased' butter Rachel's Organic Unsalted or Unsalted butters from Wales were not at the tasting - shame, as I would have liked to see how they compare and what the other tasters thought of them.
The most disappointing though was the Beppino Occelli Italian Butter an Italian Alpine butter, available from Waitrose. This had a terrible aroma (sour milk) and was just as awful in taste. Very surprising as it is an award winning product that I have had several times in the past, and one I always rated highly. We put its poor performance down to the seasonal difference in milk used as the cows have different pastures through the year. On this performance I would never buy it again but I wonder if it was 'off' in some way.
I abandoned trying to compare the various salts - they ranged from a cheap, rather grey and very crunchy sea salt from France (which was OK actually despite my description), a mountain salt from Austria (Bad Ischler Kristallsalz) and with its very salty and lingering taste Saxa Fine Sea Salt. The most interesting was a Kashmir Rock Salt from Pakistan with trace minerals adding delicate pink and orange hues to the grate-your-own chunk.
I found the Fleur de Sel with Wasabi from South Africa went superbly with quail eggs. This green coloured salt contrasting beautifully with the brick red of a salt from Hawaii (I think). But I'll stick with the maldon for my everyday use I think.
A fun time and thanks to Johanna for organising. And to the gang for supplying such tasty nibbles (I am still waiting on that cookie recipe Moira!).
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Comments
I can't stand unsalted butter, but have developed quite an affinity for Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, probably the only butter around that tastes like the butter I enjoyed growing up in England. I'm guessing you guys (yes, I can say that as a Californian) are spoilt for choice when it comes to your basic creamy butters.
The wasabi salt sounds wonderful.
Scribbled down by: catherine on November 6, 2006 3:07 AM
well done, you, beat us all to the chase with the write-up! And what glorious fotos...
Scribbled down by: johanna on November 6, 2006 1:34 PM
Aaaah, once again you've beaten me (and eveyrone else, I think!) to the post ;-) Great write-up and very glad you liked the wasabi fleur de sel from South Africa! I was a bit worried that it would turn out to be more novelty than taste, but you are right - it was sublime with the quail eggs! Now the race is on for me to get my post up...
Scribbled down by: Jeanne on November 6, 2006 2:39 PM
I actually like the idea of butter and salt tasting. It does make a lot of sense to me!
I am on the opposite side of Catherine, I do not understand why English supermarkets offer 1000 varieties of salted butter (well, there seem to always be some salt added to butter, even in the mot innocent packages, when you read the content) and being Italian I do not get it... the butter in Italy is always unsalted unless otherwise stated (which is almost never). It must be because we do not spread butter on bread while having a meal, as the French do, we onlu cook with butter and if salt is required, we add it...
I am sorry the only bad butter was Italian (shame on me), but apparently Italy is not fanus for its butter!
Thanks for the tips... am I getting boring if I keep saying, please, invite me next time!
Scribbled down by: Simonetta on November 6, 2006 3:21 PM
Now I actually enjoy both - salted on bread, often used for a risotto but for baking unsalted. I really, really dont like sweet things, such as muffins, made with salted butter.
Scribbled down by: Andrew on November 6, 2006 3:34 PM
Hi Andrew,
Interesting write-up! Please feel free to include a link to my blog; even though I haven't posted for a long while, it's still there and I will post again once I get back to the states. If I'm not too depressed from not being able to get Bridel anymore! ;-)
Scribbled down by: Moira on November 8, 2006 9:38 AM