Butter – the everlasting delight of the gourmand, the faithful ally of the culinary arts, the constant symbol of good living.

Through time and across the globe, butter has had a sacred quality. From the ancient Fertile Crescent to the present day, butter has symbolized the powerful, life giving and sacred, the good, the happy, the healthy and pure. It has sustained lives, cultures and civilizations for millennia.

Butter is a culinary treasure as old as King Tut’s tomb. "She brought forth butter in a lordly dish" (Judges 5:25). A jug of wine, a loaf of bread – and butter! Pure butter is produced today essentially as it was in King Tut’s time, though butter made of milk from cows instead of camels or water buffaloes.

It takes 21 pounds of fresh, wholesome cow’s milk to make each pound of butter like the pat of butter on waxed paper (at right) at a French farm in Brittany.