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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. Butter is used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications such as baking, sauce making, and frying. Butter consists of butterfat surrounding minuscule droplets consisting mostly of water and milk proteins. The most common form of butter is made from cows' milk, but it can also be made from the milk of other mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks. Salt, flavorings, or preservatives are sometimes added to butter. Rendering butter produces clarified butter or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat.
When refrigerated, butter remains a solid, but softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin liquid consistency at 32–35 °C (90–95 °F). The density of butter is 911 kg/m3.[1] Butter generally has a pale yellow color, but varies from deep yellow to nearly white. The color of the butter depends on the animal's feed and is commonly manipulated with food colorings in the commercial manufacturing process, most commonly annatto or carotene.
The term "butter" is used in the names of products made from puréed nuts or peanuts, such as peanut butter. It is also used in the names of fruit products, such as apple butter. Other fats solid at room temperature are also known as "butters"; examples include cocoa butter and shea butter. In general use, the term "butter," when unqualified by other descriptors, almost always refers to the dairy product. The word butter, in the English language, derives (via Germanic languages) from the Latin butyrum, borrowed from the Greek boutyron. This may have been a construction meaning "cow-cheese" (bous "ox, cow" + tyros "cheese"), or the word may have been borrowed from another language, possibly Scythian.[2] The root word persists in the name butyric acid, a compound found in rancid butter and dairy products.
