MONITOR:THE PACKAGING IS distinctly understated, but boy does it feel good. Old-fashioned, lightly waxed paper, a drawing of somebody sitting astride a stool, milking a cow. Beurre Cru à la Baratte Bois Moulé à la Main written in pale red. What's this? Raw butter? No pasteurisation? Okay, so at €3.50 per 125g it's not cheap, but boy does it taste good.
We think of pasteurisation as being a good thing, something that is done to milk to kill any pathogens that might be present. Yet there are many who consider raw milk cheese – that is cheese made from milk that is not pasteurised – to be vastly superior in its ability to deliver, in the right circumstances, a distinctly superior flavour. So, too, it can be with butter (and cream for that matter).
Barratte butter is heavy with herbal notes, hay and sunshine. It is sweet – dairy sweet. Elegant, with depth and attitude. An altogether different experience to any butter I have eaten before. Well, that is not quite true.My grandmother made butter for us in Sligo, from raw milk, and she was not alone. Raw butter is part of our farming tradition. We just don’t do it any more. Or at least very few do. As long as you conform to the regulations, there is nothing to stop a small producer selling raw milk butter, as long as it is labelled accordingly.
Pasteurisation is a form of heat treatment. You might call it zapping, as the idea is to heat the food for a short time. The potted history lesson is high with cases of TB linked to milk and the subsequent discovery by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard (Claude tends to get left out of the lesson) in 1864 that if you heat-treated milk to 71.7 degrees for 15-20 seconds it killed off most of the dangerous pathogens.
Unlike sterilisation, which kills off all pathogenic micro-organisms, pasteurisation is designed to reduce the number of viable pathogens, so they are unlikely to cause disease (and we are talking about the likes of diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid here, so no messing about). Total zapping ruins the taste of the milk (think of UHT), and so pasteurisation is a middle ground.
The trouble is that the use of pasteurisation is more widespread than you might think. Wine, beer, fruit juice and maple syrup, for example, can be pasteurised. The majority of ready-meals are pasteurised, as is crab. Think of those nifty packets of picked crabmeat that are so easy to use but, strangely, taste of nothing. Pasteurisation kills flavour – often very subtle flavour, but nonetheless flavour. And why is this done? Not for safety, but because it extends shelf life. A final zap so things are easier for the producer and retailer, but we consumers get something significantly diminished in terms of taste satisfaction.
There are some who argue that pasteurisation is a last check, a way of ensuring safety. That if you don’t have that shield it actually ensures better hygiene practices. Raw milk cheeses and butter are a world away from the everyday. They are full-blooded examples of a taste sensation we have been too willing to give away.
My daughter spread some of this raw butter on her toast yesterday and ate it all without comment. Then as she headed off to school she shouted behind her, “Yummy breakfast, Dad.” Yummy indeed. harnold@irishtimes.com
Beurre Cru à la Baratte Bois is available from Cavistons (www.cavistons.com) in Glasthule, Co Dublin, and other food retailers
