Reading a food history book and the butter thing got me

I just found out that before refrigeration, American butter was often dyed orange to hide how yellow it got from cows eating certain grasses. Saw it in 'The Food Explorer' and it made me think about how much our ingredients have changed. Anyone else come across an old kitchen fact that seems wild now?

4 comments

4 Comments

blairc903mo ago

Actually, the orange color was mostly about marketing and consistency, not really to hide spoilage. Butter color changes with the seasons based on what cows eat, more beta-carotene in fresh grass makes it yellower. So dairies started adding dye, often annatto, to make winter butter match the summer color customers expected. It was more about making a uniform product year-round than covering up bad butter, which would have other obvious problems.

quinn_burns3mo ago

My buddy's grandpa ran a dairy and said they'd get calls in winter asking if the butter was old because it looked so pale.

blair_nguyen3mo ago

Right, because nothing says quality like making sure your butter matches the decor. It's funny how we got trained to think yellow means fresh, when it just means the cow had a better salad bar that month. Guess we all fell for the oldest trick in the dairy case.

kim_ramirez31mo ago

Hold up, blairc90 makes a good point about the consistency thing, but it still bugs me. Why did they think orange was the default summer color anyway? Was it just because of the beta-carotene from grass, or did people really think butter from grass-fed cows was that bright? I've seen butter from grass-fed cows and it's more of a pale yellow, not a deep orange like you see in store-bought now. So it feels like they took a real thing and exaggerated it way too much for marketing. How did we all just accept that crazy orange shade for so long without questioning it?