did you know they had East Coast and West Coast butter?

[Alpo]

I just bought a new butter dish and in the description it said that it would work with both East Coast and West Coast butter.

 

What? East Coast and West Coast butter?? What in the hell?

 

Butter back here on my side of the country is about an inch square and about 5 inches long. Not so out on the Left Coast.

 

 

There's an explanation of course. When they first started making quarter pound sticks, instead of selling it in pound lumps, this company come out with a mold and it was the long skinny one. Many years later, when the West Coast milk products production increased and they started making a lot of butter, the company making the machinery for the long skinny stuff was no longer making it, so they came up with their own design which was short and fat.

 

I have to wonder though, if I started a butter business, would I not be able to buy a butter making machine because they're out of business? That just seems so stupid.

 

I therefore disbelieve the explanation as to why West Coast butter is shaped different than east coast.

 

I think it's simply because them California people is strange.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Butter is often sold in one pound blocks, that is the big block you show. The quarter pound block is convenient for home cooks. It has nothing to do with geography. Butter is also sold in bigger blocks to bakeries, five lbs I think. Bakers always weigh their butter for recipes, a pint a pound, the world around. But not the uk because their pints are different.

in Europe I bought butter in 100, 200, 400 gm packs.

 

Oh and never salted butter, just say no.

[Alpo]

No that is not a 1 lb block, that is a quarter pound stick. Blow the picture up and look at what it says on the package. 4 ounces.

[Alpo]

13 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

It has nothing to do with geography

https://www.thedailymeal.com/1198794/yes-there-is-a-difference-between-east-and-west-coast-butter/

[Subdeacon Joe]

Some brands here are the long and skinny, most are the short and fat.

 

 

[El Chapo]

I have never seen anything like what is on the left in that picture, and I have lived in a lot of places in the USA, from Philadelphia and D.C. to where I live now, New Mexico.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

23 minutes ago, El Chapo said:

I have never seen anything like what is on the left in that picture, and I have lived in a lot of places in the USA, from Philadelphia and D.C. to where I live now, New Mexico.

The one lb blocks are sold in Sams club and Costco as well as restaurant and bakery supply places.

[El Chapo]

Just now, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

The one lb blocks are sold in Sams club and Costco as well as restaurant and bakery supply places.

 

I have seen one pound containers, but never in the shape seen on the left.

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

Various selections available at the local grocery store (Willamette Valley, Oregon)

 

  

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

So it’s nothing about quality, all about packaging?

[Subdeacon Joe]

54 minutes ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

So it’s nothing about quality, all about packaging?

 

Yep.   

That Amish butter is pretty darn good.  Given my 'druthers that's my "eatin'" butter, and sometimes baking butter.  I use stick butter for cooking.

 

Funny thing about it, if I buy 2 or 3 regular boxes of butter no one bars an eye, but about half the time when I buy the Amish butter somebody will make a comment along the lines of, "That's a lot of butter!" To which I reply that it's no more than if I had bought 2 boxes and that you wouldn't have mentioned.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Paula Deen said she didn’t feel right if she only had two pounds of butter in the fridge.

[Forty Rod SASS 3935]

7 hours ago, PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L said:

Various selections available at the local grocery store (Willamette Valley, Oregon)

 

  

Kerrygold salted is MY butter.  I can tell the difference and just don't like anything else.

[Pat Riot]

Butter in the west is shorter 1/4 pound blocks.

Butter in the east is long slender 1/4 pound sticks. 
Handing a cook butter sticks from the opposite coast will generate a look of confusion usually followed by “This is weird. What’s wrong with this butter.”

 

Mayo:

Hellman’s mayonnaise is sold in the east. 
Best Foods is sold in the west. 
They are both made by the same company. 
 

Many food products regulated by the Pennsylvania Dept. Of Agriculture weren’t sold west of the Mississippi up until the 1990’s. Why? I have no idea. 
 

For many years the Mississippi River was the dividing line for many products and it had something to do with federal regulations, I was told.

Lunch meat that was made on the east coast could be sold on the west coast and vice versa. A company that made lunch meat on both coasts couldn’t ship lunch meat from an east coast plant to west coast customers. 
 

Weird FDA and state regs I guess. 

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

Hold are those shorter stubbier bricks sold?

In the East those long slender 1/4 lb sticks are sold in foursomes, as below.

 

 

[Warden Callaway]

Mary say Aldi use to carry butter of a different shape but all the same now.  Before Christmas the price was low for some reason. She stocked up and bought some 10 pounds.  She tends to bake a lot. Her specialty is apparently, "It's not for you.".  

[Alpo]

5 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

Hold are those shorter stubbier bricks sold?

In the East those long slender 1/4 lb sticks are sold in foursomes, as below.

 

 

Based on the first picture that PaleWolf posted - the Umpqua - they still put four quarters in a pound package, even if they are shaped differently.

 

Added: I've never seen any butter packaged like that Kate's. Margarine, certainly. Bluebonnet, parquet. They sell them with four sticks side by side. But all the butter I've seen for sale, if it's a pound, is 2x2, like the bottom picture.

[Warden Callaway]

When I was small, mom would make me butter on bread sprinkled with sugar.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

5 minutes ago, Alpo said:

Based on the first picture that PaleWolf posted - the Umpqua - they still put four quarters in a pound package, even if they are shaped differently.

 

Added: I've never seen any butter packaged like that Kate's. Margarine, certainly. Bluebonnet, parquet. They sell them with four sticks side by side. But all the butter I've seen for sale, if it's a pound, is 2x2, like the bottom picture.

Yes, I’m wondering what the four in a pound looks like.

[Alpo]

Based on the shape of the butter quarter and the shape of the package, I'm guessing standing up on edge, like Oreos.

[Cyrus Cassidy #45437]

I life in Colorado, the heart of "the West," and I've never seen a one pound brick of butter.  It's all quarter pound sticks here.  You must have to go WAAAAAY out left to find those.

[Dirty Dan Dawkins]

13 hours ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

Paula Deen said she didn’t feel right if she only had two pounds of butter in the fridge.

Me either.

I see butter sold in all of these various forms, shapes and sizes demonstrated here.

[Subdeacon Joe]

 

Most in boxes like this. Box is 6.5×3×1.5 and the sticks are laid out

 

      1               2

 

       3              4

 

The boxes with the skinny sticks that I've seen have them stack 2x2.  

 

 

[PaleWolf Brunelle, #2495L]

[Capt. James H. Callahan]

Interesting. HEB supermarkets here have their own brand in both kinds. For some reason the short fat ones are significantly cheaper so I buy those!

Can't tell any difference taste wise.

JHC