Buttering your bread -- and cake

By Tom Harte

Jack Conaway was cutting peat for fuel in the Emlagh bog in County Meath, Ireland, back in 2016 when he made a stinking discovery. Buried twelve feet underground was a twenty-two pound lump of butter estimated to be about 2,000 years old.

The surprising thing about this finding is that it is not all that surprising. Hundreds of specimens of so-called "bog butter" have been located across the Emerald Isle. I've even seen one.

It's on display at the Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, near the old Butter Exchange, in its heyday the largest exporter of butter in the world. The museum houses all kinds of exhibits which testify to the important role of butter in the economy of Ireland and the lives of its people. Besides the bog butter, among other things there are churns and other pieces of butter-making equipment, old firkins (wooden casks), which in bygone days were used to ship butter, and a collection of butter wrappers from the past.

You cannot spend any time at all at the museum without realizing that butter is woven into practically every aspect of Irish life. As Ari Weinzweig, the James Beard Award-winning co-founder of Zingerman's, one of America's best specialty food stores, puts it, "Butter is in the culture, in the countryside, in the kitchen, in the culinary schools, in the economy."

At the Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, Tom Harte examines an assortment of iconic butter wrappers, used over the centuries to package what is arguably the Emerald Isle's most important food product.TOM HARTE

Butter is to the Irish what olive oil is to the Italians. They cook almost everything with it and though they might occasionally be cowed into using a butter substitute like margarine, they would never think of insulting guests by offering it to them lest it bring shame upon the house. For them butter is the essence of hospitality. Weinzweig even goes so far as to suggest that when butter is brought to an Irish table, people glow in the same way that Americans might when a bowl of ice cream is placed before them.

As I wandered through the Cork Butter Museum contemplating all this, it occurred to me that if I truly want to celebrate the upcoming St. Patrick's Day holiday by eating Irish food (is there any better way to celebrate?) Irish butter should be part of the equation.

After all, potatoes, a food which we associate with Ireland, are not native to the island, but an import from Peru. Soda bread, that unique Irish take on the staff of life, is not as traditional as you might think, going back only to the 19th century, around the time when baking soda was invented. And corned beef and cabbage, as noted in this space some time ago, is actually an American creation, not an Irish one.

No, if you want to eat authentically on St. Patrick's Day, you must have Irish butter. You won't be disappointed. Irish butter, like Kerrygold, the quintessential brand, is made only from cream donated by cows who leisurely graze on fresh grass, hence it's richer and more flavorful--and deeply hued.

So this St. Patrick's Day don't go for the green, go for the Kerrygold.

A generous pat of rich, flavorful and deeply hued Irish butter, perhaps the most authentic food with which to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, turns almost any slice of bread into a gourmet treat.TOM HARTE ~ photos@ semissourian.com

Irish Butter Cake

Calling this concoction "buttery" would be an understatement as the cake is not only made with butter but drenched in butter sauce after baking. The recipe is adapted from Hayley Parker's dessert blog.

• 3 cups flour
• 2 and 3/4 cups sugar, divided
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 and 1/3 cups butter, divided
• 5 teaspoons vanilla, divided
• 4 eggs
• 3 tablespoons water

Cream together 1 cup of the butter and 2 cups of the sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add 1 tablespoon of the vanilla, salt, baking powder and soda and combine. Alternately add flour and buttermilk and combine to make a thick batter. Pour into greased and floured tube pan and bake at 325 degrees for an hour, or until tester inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool 15 minutes. Meanwhile, combine remaining 3/4 cup sugar, remaining 1/3 cup butter, remaining 2 teaspoons vanilla, and water and heat until just starting to simmer. Poke deep holes over surface of cake and pour butter sauce over top. Cool completely, remove from pan, and dust with powdered sugar.