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EveryCow

Butter and ghee

Isigny butter (Normandy cultured butter)

Golden butter churned from ripened cream on the wet pastures around the Veys bay in Normandy, under a protected name.

Beurre d'Isigny is butter from the low, damp pastures around Isigny-sur-Mer, where the rivers of the Cotentin and Bessin run into the Veys bay. The cream is ripened with lactic cultures before churning, which gives the butter a gentle tang, and the grass gives it a deep golden colour. It carries a protected designation of origin, as does the area's crème fraîche.

What goes in

Cream: 71%71%Lactic cultures: 7%Cold water: 14%14%Salt: 7%4parts
  • Cream1071%, Skimmed from local milk.
  • Lactic cultures17%, Ripen the cream before churning.
  • Cold water214%, Washes the butter grains.
  • Salt17%, Only for the salted kind.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Milk Milk the herd and separate the cream.
  2. Step 2: Ferment Seed the cream with lactic cultures and leave it to ripen.
  3. Step 3: Churn Churn the ripened cream until the butter grains break from the buttermilk.
  4. Step 4: Strain Drain the buttermilk and wash the grains in cold water.
  5. Step 5: Shape Work the butter smooth, salt it if wanted, and shape it into blocks or rolls.
  6. Cream: 71%71%Lactic cultures: 7%Cold water: 14%14%Salt: 7%
    Finished Isigny butter (Normandy cultured butter), by share.

Cultured butter

Before refrigeration, cream skimmed over several days soured naturally before it was churned, and most butter in Europe was cultured. Isigny and other French dairy regions kept the style when much of the world moved to sweet cream butter. Today the cream is pasteurised, then seeded with chosen cultures and left to ripen for some hours before it goes to the churn.

The pastures

The marshes and wet meadows behind the coast stay green for much of the year, and the salt winds are said to reach the grass. The butter is high in carotene from the pasture, which colours it without any additive. Normande cows, brown, white and spectacled around the eyes, were the traditional herd of the Bessin, now alongside Holsteins.

Where it is used

On breadPastry and croissantsSauces

The breeds behind it

NormandeThe traditional dairy breed of the Bessin pastures.Holstein FriesianNow common in Normandy herds.MontbéliardeFrench dairy breed also kept in the region.

More on EveryCow

No breeds here yet. New pages are added every day.

Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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