Third Culture Kitchen

Butter
Butter should be stored cold, under 8°C, or in a weak vacuum, like in butter bells. If butter is stored both warm and in air, it spoils and starts smelling awful. If you are not used to handling dairy products, take special care to remember to put them (including butter) back into the refrigerator quickly. When frying with butter, you have to be gentler than with oil. Butter contains water, and when you first put butter in a warm pan, it sizzles as the water boils off. Then, it will brown. If you push the butter in the pan together with a spatula, it will look light brown instead of pale yellow. After it browns, it can burn and turn very dark brown. Burned butter is not only bad for your health, it tastes bad. If you burn the butter, pour it out and start over with lower heat.

Syrup (Siirappi (Finnish), sirap (Swedish))

Syrup with no qualifier is sugar beet syrup to me. It is referred to as literally just ‘syrup’ in the Nordic languages and is similar to molasses, but is slightly different in flavor. It is available at IKEA and perhaps specialty expatriate stores. American or Canadian maple syrup cannot be substituted. Maple syrup is very thin and has a flavor of its own, whereas syrup is thick and mainly just sweet. I thought that syrup was molasses in English for a long time, but then discovered while making gingerbread that molasses will give a slightly strange flavor. Dan Sukker is the most common brand of syrup I’ve seen.