I started musing on this after seeing reading a random tweet, Until I started to research this I didn’t really think about the link between milk and butter and where cream factored into it.
Butter is created by whisking/mixing or ‘churning’ the cream until it the fats separate and it becomes butter and buttermilk. You can do it with pure cream (rather than thickened or any other form of adulterated cream) and an electric beater (you could also do it with a whisk if you’ve got a lot of time on your hands and want to do some focused exercise, but like making meringues by hand it’s something you do once and never again). The cream undergoes a seemingly magical transformation and goes from white to yellow.
The earliest mention of butter comes from Herodotus a Greek historian, according to him he says “pour the milk of their mares into wooden vessels, and shake it violently; this causes it to foam, and the fat part, which is light, rising to the surface, becomes what is called butter”. They considered the foam, the butter to be more valuable than the separated milk.
Hippocrates also mentions butter he prescribes it externally as a medicine; though he gives it another name, pikerion.
Pliny the Elder also recommended it; to ease the pain of teething (mixed with honey) and also for ulcers in the mouth.
In fact, after the Greeks and Romans learnt how to make butter they used it only as an ointment in their baths and as Hippocrates used it; in medicine.
The Romans used it to anoint their bodies and the Burgundians smeared their hair with it.
It didn’t pass into cookery use at this point in time, very likely because of the climate, the churned butter wouldn’t stay solid for long in a warm climate that the Romans inhabited, and they were already using oils for cooking and wouldn’t have a reason to switch to dairy based ones. [1]
Another source, an article in the Southern Argus Thursday 20 April 1933 says “The Arabs and Hebrews made a sort of bag out of animal pelts, filled them half full of milk, sewed them up, and then manipulated them by swinging and kneading them until butter formed”, this article also states the ‘legend’ of butter’s creation that “legend has it that butter was accidentally discovered, through the ancients carrying the milk in an animal skin, the swaying giving the action and producing butter.”. [2]
From around the same era, 1923 The Muswellbrook Chronicle on Friday 5 October published an article called ‘Butter Some Interesting History’ which agin mentions a variant of this legend, except it actually quotes a member of staff Mr W. R. Torrens from the Byron Bay Butter Factory who says "I believe, the Arabs have used a method of tying a rope to the skin bag containing the milk, and draw ing it about the ground, from the back of a pony or camel, till the butter formed.”. [3]
Another article in the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin (Friday 2 August 1929) has another variant of this tale, this time attributing it to the Aryans who it describes as “The early Aryans of Central Asia, from whom the entire descended were the first heardsmen” and because they were “not being tillers of the soil, these nomads were forced to depend wry greatly on the dairy products of their herds.”
It goes on to state that “On their journeys the nomads carried their milk in the goat skins by camel or horseback. During one trip the jogging of the animals churned the milk to butter. The surprised Aryans liked the taste of the butter and regarded it as a gift from the gods.” [4]
There are several other newer articles I came across and a lot of them tell some variation of the ‘vessel of milk on horse back’ story. This story / myth / legend of butter’s discovery must have come from somewhere. These various articles I’ve found have pretty similar components to the story.
This ‘legend’ appears on several sites and it’s got the air of one of those facts that has been repeated so many times that it sounds true enough, the logic behind it seems to make sense, but I haven’t been able to find anything that actually backs it up with any good sources.
The issues I have with this legend of butter’s creation really, is that it’s similar in the way it’s repeated to how blue cheese was discovered which also goes through similar variants of a ‘it was left in a cave’ / ‘a sheppard left his cheese in a cave and it went mouldy’ tales.
That just in my brief voyage through Trove’s search engine I’ve found similar tales of its origin more likely means all these newspapers were working from the same piece texts.
Butter it seems is one of those things discovered by accident. Although that isn’t an answer I’m happy with, but for now, it’s an answer. Just not a complete answer to the question.