The Evening World, New York, March 24, 1904
Has anyone tried this? I feel compelled to at least take the idea seriously
The trouble with *holding* it upside-down is that gravity works against you, and some or all of the butter may fall off.
I generally compromise by holding it butter-side-up, then using my tongue to flip each bite over inside my mouth.
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*looks up “voluble”* Wait, hang on, is this a joke about oiling your tongue in order to make your speech-producing mechanisms work better? I thought we were talking about how to best enjoy the flavour.
So having tried this, here are my findings:
1) I didn’t have any trouble with the butter coming off, it was all pretty well into the bread. If you used a lot more butter than I did though perhaps that could become a problem?
2) The flavor profile is definitely a little different. I get the butter first and then later the flip side (my test was performed with end pieces of a wonderbread style loaf, I do have some dough rising so maybe I’ll see with some normal bread).
3) However the butter flavor is still very available eating it butter side up. It’s more of an accent though. I didn’t find it made a big difference, although if you wanted to maximize the butter flavor (to skimp on butter, maybe, or if you just really love butter) butter side down might be worthwhile.
4) The actual inconvenience to me was that I had to hold my slice in a nonstandard configuration.
My conclusion is that this approach is probably not, generally speaking, for me, but I think it’s a reasonable preference.
It may be worth noting that in many cases my buttered bread has room-temperature bread, and butter partway between refrigerator-temperature and room-temperature. In these cases the butter does not melt into the bread at all, and is often not even that firmly attached.
(I *try* to bring butter up to room temperature before spreading it, but I don’t always get enough advance notice.)
Ah, my butter is almost always up to room temperature (which is relatively easy for me, since the only other person to regularly use my butter is my girlfriend, who is, of all the people in the world, uniquely willing to my opinions on butter handling). And also if it was not quite room temperature I would almost definitely toast the bread in question.
Cold butter on cool bread would be less amenable.
#I don’t know exactly how long butter takes to go bad at room temperature but it really does take a while #I keep mine in a small airtight container and I’ve never had it go bad even if the temperature cycles up to over 90f most days #well it did go bad when I was out of town for six weeks but I don’t think it’s ever taken me more than three to use a stick of butter #if warm butter but is reaching it’s EOL I bake with it #measuring butter that’s never deformed is much easier though
Might also be relevant that most Canadian butter is sold in blocks the size of four sticks. (Usually with markings along the side of the (paper-lined foil) wrapper to indicate things like “slice here to get ¼ cup”.)
(I used to think it was *all* Canadian butter, but I recently discovered that President’s Choice brand butter is in stick format.)
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