We finally find East Coast butter!
Occasionally a weirdo item at an antique store catches both of our eyes. I typically see it first (because Steve is usually lagging behind looking at record albums). But when I see something and then a few minutes later he says, “Hey, look at this!” - well, we are compelled to buy it.
The Frigidaire Butter Pre-Server came into our possession a few years ago in exactly this way. First came the questions and answers based on in-store Googling: “What IS it?” “How exactly does it WORK?” The function of this strange little contraption is definitely not obvious. The buttery yellow and shape definitely says BUTTER. The top slides up and down with three rectangular chambers. It has a mechanism and square insert that slices and pushes along a stick of butter into perfectly sliced pats. The idea is you slice what you will need and then put it back in the fridge to stay nice and cold. Yes, we need this!
Once we brought it home we realized we had a slight problem - West Coast butter. I found out only about 5 years ago that there are two different shapes of butter sold in the U.S.: East Coast butter sticks are longer and thinner; West Coast sticks are shorter and stubbier. They are all still the same amount of butter, just shaped differently. Apparently the original skinnier shape originated from the Elgin Butter Company in Elgin, Illinois and was known as “Elgin Butter”, the East coast standard. When commercial butter expanded to the western part of the country they used newer machinery that produced the stubbier shape.
After two years Steve FINALLY found a local source (a vendor at the Homestead Conference) of the thinner style sticks, which is what this device requires. So after our long wait we finally got to test it out.
Amazingly, it worked exactly as advertised. Some of these oldish “time saving” gadgets just absolutely crack us up!
Here she is! You can see why she caught our eye sitting on that antique store shelf. Our butter source is the same company from whom we purchased our grain. It’s a nationwide consolidator of (mostly organic) farms and small ag businesses.
You can also see how it is not at all clear how this thing works when you open the side panel.
The middle section has a removable square plastic insert which the tracts push forward one slice space at a time as you raise and lower the cover. The butter goes in front of the spacer.
The metal tray catches the slices.
Okay, we are loaded and ready to give it a try!
Ta da! We have sliced butter! To be fair, this stick was pretty well still frozen and honestly was super easy to slice like this.
Then you just pop it in the fridge where it acts as a butter holder and tray. So excited to have finally been able to put this cutie to work!
