Butter

Hello — and welcome to Visiting from Venus.This is the audio version of this week’s essay, read by me.I hope you enjoy itOne of the most delicious things in life is a slice of fresh white farmhouse bread with a thick layer of real butter and a good grinding of black pepper. The pepper is best if it’s fairly coarse, although I have lost a filling to an oversized piece before, totally worth it.When I was growing up, there was a definite shift towards margarine. Adults kept talking about high blood pressure or cholesterol, and their solution was to replace real butter with margarine — a highly processed alternative full of trans fats. I actually don’t remember ever having real butter in our fridge. The closest we came was when my dad proudly brought home Lurpak, which is like butter just anaemic.My first real memory of butter was at a college party. I’d probably drunk far too much Liebfraumilch and ended up at a friend’s boyfriend’s parents’ house. They were out. It was a pretty cool house, if I remember rightly — a cottage out in the forest with surfboards leaning against the living-room wall and a mash of totally unrelated furniture throughout. I, naturally, found myself in the kitchen. Where else does one go at a house party?All I remember is a glass butter dish and a white, floury farmhouse loaf on a battered wooden breadboard, next to a breadknife with an equally battered wooden handle. Feeling slightly hungry, I sawed a chunk off the end, lifted the glass lid, and spread on a thick helping of creamy yellow heaven — the kind that spreads easily because it hasn’t been refrigerated. Mother of Mary. Why would anyone in their right mind replace this divine substance with margarine? Dogs certainly wouldn’t. Dogs know better. Dogs will eat butter; dogs will not eat margarine.I sat on the sideboard and ate the entire loaf accompanied by the entire slab of butter. I’d like to take this moment to apologise to the parents, whom I have no memory of ever meeting, but as a teenager at a house party in an unknown house the boundaries of etiquette are… blurred. If my children ever host a house party when I’m not there, I will not be happy. A) because of this fact, and B) because of, well, FOMO.I say that was my earliest memory of butter, but actually, as a kid, we used to go on holiday to low-budget holiday camps with buffet-style mealtimes. You collected your plates and cleared them onto big metal trolleys afterward — a bit like school, or Ikea, or, I imagine, prison. The toast in the mornings was served lukewarm in a metal rack, usually three brown slices and three white, chewy and quite floppy. Alongside it were a few tiny foil squares of butter. My mum would put so much butter on her toast you could see tooth marks — partly because of the thickness, partly because it’s hard to melt on cold toast. That, to me, is a holiday treat.While we’re on the subject of restaurants — why don’t they serve complimentary bread and butter anymore? It used to be my favourite part of the meal. For a while, oils and vinegars were fashionable, and I went through a phase of preferring that because it felt very upmarket. But the real jackpot was warm bread served with flavoured butter — whipped fresh butter with herbs or salt or garlic. I’m guessing its disappearance has something to do with appetite suppression and therefore spending more money, or maybe it went out of fashion when low/no-carb diets arrived to ruin everything.When I first moved to London, I saved up to take my mum to Jamie Oliver’s first restaurant. They served mixed breads with flavoured butter. After being re-loaded at least once, we ordered second helpings from the menu. If complimentary bread is meant to suppress appetite, this is irrefutable proof that it does not — especially when eaten with copious amounts of wine.I’ve actually been reading a book called Butter. It’s been translated from Japanese and follows a food writer who ends up in prison for killing several rich boyfriends. (This does not give away the plot, oddly.) At one point she describes the utter joy of hot steamed rice with butter. I have now started adding butter to rice. I have not started killing rich boyfriends — although I haven’t reached the part where she describes how to do that yet.I do have friends whose kids will happily eat plain pasta and butter as a fully sanctioned dinner. Apparently it’s common in Italy, especially in the north, and if anyone knows about good eating habits, it’s Italians.There you have it books have been written about it, songs have been sung titled it and TV chef James Martin might as well bathe in it.So, next time someone says dogs are stupid, ask them if they eat margarine. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit toriecampbell.substack.com