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Serious Eats: Talk

Soapy butter

Posted by dbcurrie, August 8, 2008

Okay, I bought a brick of butter -- you know, the uncut pound thing. Today, I whacked off a hunk and put some into the butter dish I just took out of the dishwasher. Then I made some toast, buttered it, and started munching.

Odd floral soapy flavor. Hmmmm....what could that be? I tasted the bread. It was fine. Took a litte taste of the butter on the toast, and it, too, tasted fine.

Thought I was going nuts, took a bite of toast and butter. Ugh. Soap. Went to the butter dish, carefully tasted a bit of butter that was the outer portion of the butter rather than interior, where I cut it. Yup, soap. Blech.

So glad I didn't use it in an important recipe, and that I discovered this before I served it to anyone else.

I tossed the whole pound out. Then I thought about it. Should I have simply cut off the outer portion of the butter that had apparently absorbed a soapy flavor somewhere in shipping? Should I have returned the butter to the store?

What would you have done?

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