Butter Boards Have Become An Online Sensation And We Think You Might Like It Too

Butter boards as a food trend was initiated by a Brooklyn-based food influencer called Justine Doiron. To create the dish, all you have to do is get a pack of butter that isn’t too cold then spread it all over a board.

After that, sprinkle anything you want on the buttered board. These could include toasted almonds, honey, chili flakes, roasted garlic and even nasturtium petals. When you’re satisfied, spread the garnished butter on bread just like regular butter.

It’s quite exciting and the synergy of the dish is what makes it stand out so much. According to Niki Segnit, author of The Flavour Thesaurus, it is easy to trace butter boards back to an American chef named Joshua McFadden.

McFadden is the author of Six Seasons which includes several compound butters embellished with micro herbs; however Segnit believes that the origin of butter boards goes even farther into the past.

She said: "You could go to Larousse [the seminal tome, repository of classic French techniques], and there are all these combinations of compound butter that have been around since butter was invented.”

Segnit says that the butter board is a “tortured” food trend because there aren’t a lot of ways to do it so it looks attractive which is where nasturtiums come in. Ingredients that are wet or that bleeds colour, will mess the board up.

Unfortunately, many nice and fresh ingredients don’t work well enough. Segnit also believes that the butter board is a hard dish to serve in domestic settings because it can easily look terrible.

She said: “You’re basically putting out a flat board of flourless cake mixture; it would work with french toast, muesli, granola, waffle. It is,” she concludes, “going to taste nice”.

Butter boards have gone viral in recent days, especially on TikTok but according to Segnit, they are all doing it wrong because many don’t whip the butter before they spread it on the board.

Here’s what Chef Remi Williams had to say about the whipping principle: “Whip it for 10 minutes until it goes white and fluffy, but with a mixer, not by hand. The fat distribution differently is what changes the colour. As it gets aerated and fluffy, you get a better flavour. The air moves through the butter so you can taste it more, because you taste through your nose, not your mouth.”

Things to avoid while making a butter board:

• Boards with square corners and no knots
• Ingredients with too much color or wetness
• Avoid ingredients that are too oily or transgressive

Enjoy!