Salted Butter: A Love Story

searching for French butter in the US, and a cooking class in Paris

I once took a cooking class from a woman named Valerie in the 7^th arrondissement. I wore a T-shirt and jeans, because in the kitchen I’ve been known to accidentally sling things about. Valerie wore a pristine white blouse.

As she showed us how to nurture the sauce for the Basque chicken, to develop it through many elaborate and precise steps I knew I could never remember or repeat, I kept waiting for a spot of grease or tomato sauce to fly onto her shirt, but it never did. She was like a housekeeper in a BBC period piece, still spotless and unflappable after hours of dusty labor. By the time we had the meal on the table, my T-shirt was flamboyantly spotted with the grease of salted butter.

Bien sur, any cooking class in a Paris apartment begins with champagne.

Salted butter is perhaps France’s greatest gift to humanity. Can we pause for a moment to discuss the way the salt crystals crunch between your teeth? Americans talk of Parisian baguettes as if they are a revelation unto themselves, but after my time in France I think of the bread as a butter delivery system. (Which is not to say I have never eaten the butter right out of the waxed paper wrapping with a spoon).

I can get bread that’s almost as good in Northern California, but I cannot find anything resembling beurre salé fresh from Normandy. Should you be justifiably reluctant to trust me on culinary matters, take it from David Leibovitz:

Although you can get a good amount of excellent food in the US, the one thing that I haven’t quite found an equal to is French butter.

Maybe I loved the butter so because Damian, a true Normand, brought it to Paris himself every Saturday, to his stall at the Batingnolles Bio Marche. Or maybe I loved it because it felt decadent in a way nothing else about Paris ever did, because when you live in Paris instead of visiting it as a tourist, its disfunction makes itself known just as often as its beauty.

But back to the Paris cooking class: after the lot of us American and British women had been tutored in the art of Basque chicken by Valerie, we sat down to a beautiful table and shared the meal. You will note that Valerie had a tree just outside her window, a true luxury in Paris.

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At any rate, I have not repeated the Basque chicken. Nor have I taken to wearing pristine white blouses in my own kitchen, where I have been known to unceremoniously fling things about. But I retain my love of French salted butter, which I sometimes purchase from the French grocery store on El Camino in Burlingame. The store is called The Gourmet Corner, but it should be called the French corner, because it’s all French, all the time.

Once, during the Great French Mustard Shortage of 2022, I found pallets full of Edmond Fallot moutarde en grains at The Gourmet Corner. Had France exported all of its mustard to Burlingame, California? We’ll never know. (Naturally, fearing a stateside shortage, I bought not one but two jars, one of which sat untouched in the cabinet until I went searching for it while writing this post, because, unlike the French, I do not know what to do with mustard).

Valerie and one of her cooking students, with sel de mer and the inexpensive butter in every French kitchen: President

My favorite Northern California creamery, Straus, also makes a nice salted butter, but it’s lightly salted—which in France is called demi-sel. I like the kind you can find for a two or three euros in any French grocery, the kind with big salt crystals that crunch between your teeth. If you happen to be on the San Francisco Peninsula, Draeger’s in San Mateo sells the brand President, which is a staple in French kitchens. They also sell Sierra Nevada Vat-cultured European Salted Butter, which is recommended by Draeger’s Cooking School.

If you don’t have a gourmet grocer near you, you need not go unbuttered. Trader Joe’s Cultured Salted Butter, made in Brittany, is excellent. Bon Appetit declared it “as good as the French stuff.” TJ’s describes it as “lightly salted, subtly tangy, enviably creamy.” I tried it, and liked it better than the Sierra Nevada butter, which costs twice as much.

Over the last two weeks I’ve become a bit obsessed, and have sought out as many different types of European-style salted butter as possible, so my husband and I can do a taste test (he has made me do taste tests of everything from chocolate milk to root beer to ice cream sandwiches, so, like Grace Paley would say, I feel justified). Between Draeger’s and a small grocer on Broadway in Burlingame, I found salted butters from the brands Plugra (from Kansas), LurPak (made in Denmark), Sierra Nevada (made in Glenn County, California), and President (from Normandy). After reading the Bon Appetit article, I drove to Trader Joe’s for their butter from Brittany. And in Gualala, California, during a trip to The Sea Ranch last week, I found a European-style salted butter from a brand called Rumiano, a family-owned cheese company that started in Willows, California in 1919.

We haven’t done the taste test yet, for two reasons. The first reason is our arteries. The second reason is that the moment I tasted the Trader Joe’s butter, I was addicted. Seriously, it’s that good. The salt doesn’t quite crunch between your teeth, but you’ll find a visible flake here and there. This week, I will procure a proper(ish) baguette. I’ll probably get the bread from Backhaus in San Mateo, which makes the most French-feeling baguette I’ve found in the Bay Area. Most baguettes in American bakeries are too soft and spongy, and the stuff you find in American grocery stores (even Draeger’s) called “French baguette” is a travesty. A real baguette tradition is brown and crunchy and pointed on the ends and kind of hurts your mouth).

Baguette in hand, we will try every butter in turn, and I will report back.

Until then, happy wandering!

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy No Bread til Paris.

No Bread til Paris

September Substack Roundup

Oh, and if you really want to get that I-need-to-go-to-Paris-right-this-very-second feeling, read this post by

The Real Emily in Paris

. I’m a huge fan of Emily’s Substack, A Week in Paris, wherein an Aussie who has lived in Paris for seven years shares her daily life as a chef and mom.

One more thing: since one of our aforementioned butters is Danish, I thought I’d point you to another terrific Substack for the culturally curious, Living Danishly by

Helen Russell

.

Thank you for reading The Wandering Writer! You might also enjoy my other Substack,

Novella with Michelle Richmond

, where I share essays on things like marriage (I’ve been married since the beginning of time), plus serial fiction.