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old hand
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old hand
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I wonder why it is that when some people (myself included) wish to praise a leather garment's softness, we say it is "buttery"? My Canuck Oxford defines the word as "like, containing, or made with butter." But....I'm not in the habit of stroking butter and finding it smooth and pleasing to the touch, certainly not in the way I am fond of feeling up my leather jeans (hey, if no one else will fondle me in them, I'll do it meself!)....
Why "buttery"? anyone know how this first arrived?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Earliest known use in a post dated 6 February 2003 on AWAD by a Canadian using the pseudonym modestgoddess.
Bingley
Bingley
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risking the start of a food thread, foods with butter added to them are softer... bread and water makes a corse bread. add some butter, and you get soft bread... (and sugar and butter and you get a cake)
add just sugar to flour and water, and the bread is sweet, but not as soft as when you add butter (or other fat) most "sweet breads" (not sweetbreads!) have very little sugar or honey but they do have a lot of fat.
as it does for bread, it also does for liquids... soups or gravies with added butter are smoother.
leathers are tanned with tannic and other acids, and some of them are fatty acids..maybe some of these have buttery names (and help contribute to a softer feel..)
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And, yet, of troy, the more butter you add to cookie dough, the 'shorter' it becomes...or, in other words, it becomes crisper in baking. Short breads can become just like cookies by adding ample butter.
Do set me straight if I've got this mixed-up, no pun intended.
Heavens, it is finger-licking good to have you back here.
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Until comparatively recently, fat was expensive, and demand exceeded supply. Remember the
Bible talking about "the fat of the land." Fat satisfies hunger better than either carbohydrate
or protein. Butter was the most appealing form of fat. So butter was better.
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the thing with cookies vs. bread is the water..
flour and butter and water starts out as bread.. (yeast implied)
remove the yeast, and keep the flour, butter, water, (with some sort of leavening) and short bread... keep increasing the shortning, and reducing the water, cookies-- the less water, the crisper the cookie...
but high fat cookies, even when crisp, are 'tender" but plain flour and water, no fat at all, baked like a cookie becomes "hardtack".
crisp cookies are "tender" they are easy to bite into, and 'melt' in your mouth -- truly... the saliva starts to turn the flour (starch) into sugar, the sugar and butter melt...
'sandies' (a very high fat cookie) might feel sandy and gritty in hand, but they are not dry and sandy in you mouth!
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whether you stroke your butter or not(pause for everyone to have their moment), I think it's accepted that butter is a soft, pliable substance, and having a piece of leather that exhibits these characteristics is desirable. I've purchased not a few lousy, stiff leather belts, and finally found a beautiful, buttery belt at Old Navy, on sale, $4.00. I'd diet to keep wearing this belt.
formerly known as etaoin...
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whether you stroke your butter or not Ohmigawd!!! You are naughty!  How come you don't like the color of your $4 belt?
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How come you don't like the color of your $4 belt?
ok, you lost me on this one... <quizzical look>
formerly known as etaoin...
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In reply to:
I'd diet to keep wearing this belt.
diet...
dye it
-Rhonduh Obvious
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Rhonduh Obvious
Thus pushing the bounds of obviousness to a new level of subtlety.
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 oh dopey me. it was early. yeah, that's it. it was early.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Thus pushing the bounds of obviousness to a new level of subtlety. Thank you. I try. ;-) Consuelo, you go, girl! 
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I try. ;-)
Sometimes I consider my pun blindness a blessing.
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old hand
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whether you stroke your butter or not(pause for everyone to have their moment)I love it. Thanks, everyone, for the info/speculation on buttery - that hadn't occurred to me but it makes sense (that it makes food richer).... Bingley, had you really never heard "buttery" used this way before?! What about anyone else? Guess that's the beauty of language - it never ceases to surprise....
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What most people I knew called the "pantry" a small room adjoining a kitchen, my father
called the "buttery" (he didn't pronounce the 'e')
buttery 1
n.,
pl. 3ter[ies 5ME boterie, ale cellar, pantry < OFr, storage room for casks < ML buteria: see BUTT36
1 a storeroom for wine and liquor
2 a LARDER (sense 1)
3 a room in some English colleges where provisions are available to students
but[ter[y2 7but4!r c8
adj.
1 like butter, as in consistency
2 containing or spread with butter
3 inclined to flattery; adulatory
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Now, then, I would have thought the buttery was the place where you worked the churn. Isn't the creamery where you separate/store/use the cream?
(Edit: Or is it the place where you keep the wine containers? For the Malmsey? Did we ever figure out how big a butt was? No, no, I mean in fluid ounces?)
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Speaking of churning, as a boy I was puzzled by Aesop's fable about the two frogs that
fell into a pail of milk. The sides of the pail were so steep and slippery, they couldn't climb
out. One gave up trying, and drowned. The other kept kicking until the cream turned into
a gob of butter, on which he sat until the milkmaid let him out in the morning. I couldn't
believe that she wouldn't have been angry enough to kill him. I wouldn't want to drink milk
fogs had been swimming in.
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You gone drink butter, Dr Bill?
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Maybe I'd invent frog leg chowder. With lots of butter.
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Maybe I'd invent frog leg chowder.Hmmm...Hyla Soup! 
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Dear WO'N: With a capital H, it's cannibalism. With a small h, the legs of two of them
wouldn't make more than a teaspoonful of chowder.
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