It is thought that butter might have initially been made by ancient Asian nomads while travelling with containers of milk. The movement of the caravan might have churned the milk to produce butter.
However, the name butter takes its origin from the Greek word bouturon, which means cow cheese. Even though the Greeks knew about butter, they never used it as food, but as medicine.
It is said that the Celts might have introduced butter in Britain during the pre-Roman Iron Age. They even found a method to preserve butter by adding salt. Ancient records show that for preserving 4.5 kg of butter, almost 450 g of salt was added to it. But interestingly, before eating the butter some salt was washed off. The butter was then kneaded with water and the liquid pummeled out.
Butter has been a part of Indian cooking since time immemorial. Butter was a very expensive commodity back then.
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