Butter trivia quiz questions
What is butter?
A: Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and
protein components of
churned cream.
It is a semi-solid emulsion at what temperature?
A: At room temperature.
How much of it is butterfat?
A: 80%
It is used at room temperature as a what?
A: A spread.
When melted it is used as a what?
A: A condiment.
It is used as a fat in what?
A: Baking, sauce-making, pan frying, and other cooking procedures.
Butter is most frequently made from what?
A: Cow's milk.
Butter can also be manufactured from the milk of other
what?
A: Mammals, including sheep, goats, buffalo, and yaks.
How is it made?
A: By churning milk or cream to separate the fat globules from the
buttermilk.
Salt has been added to butter since antiquity to help
to do what?
Salt’s role as a preservative is less important today
as the entire supply chain is usually what?
A: Refrigerated.
In modern times salt may be added for what?
A: Its taste.
Rendering butter, removing the water and milk solids,
produces what?
A: Clarified butter or ghee, which is almost entirely butterfat.
Butter remains a firm solid when refrigerated, but
softens to a spreadable consistency at room temperature, and melts to a thin
liquid consistency at what temperature?
A: 32 to 35 °C (90 to 95 °F).
It generally has a pale yellow
color but varies from
deep yellow to what?
A: Nearly white.
Its natural, unmodified color is dependent on what?
A: The source animal's feed and genetics.
The commercial manufacturing process sometimes
manipulates the color with what?
A: Food colorings like annatto or carotene.
Un-homogenized milk and cream contain butterfat in what?
A: Microscopic globules.
Butter contains fat in what three separate forms?
A: Free butterfat, butterfat crystals, and undamaged fat globules.
In the finished product, different proportions of these
forms result in what?
A: Different consistencies within the butter; butters with many crystals are
harder than butters dominated by free fats.
Churning produces small butter grains floating in what?
A: The water-based portion of the cream.
What is this watery liquid called?
A: Buttermilk—although the buttermilk most common today is instead a
directly fermented skimmed milk.
The buttermilk is then what?
A: Drained off; sometimes more buttermilk is removed by rinsing the grains
with water.
Then the grains are what?
A: "Worked", pressed and kneaded together.
This consolidates the butter into a solid mass and
breaks up what?
A: Embedded pockets of buttermilk or water into tiny droplets.
Before modern factory butter making, cream was usually
collected from several milkings and was therefore what?
A: Several days old and somewhat fermented by the time it was made into
butter.
What is butter made from a fermented cream known as?
A: Cultured butter.
Butter made from pasteurized fresh cream is called
what?
A: Sweet cream butter.
Production of sweet cream butter first became common in
the 19th century, with the development of what?
A: Refrigeration and the mechanical cream separator.