{"id":27570,"date":"2016-06-23T10:26:58","date_gmt":"2016-06-23T14:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=27570"},"modified":"2016-06-23T10:26:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T14:26:58","slug":"butter-in-the-bog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/butter-in-the-bog\/","title":{"rendered":"Butter at the Bottom of the Bog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How long has that butter been in your fridge? Several weeks? Maybe a few months? Two thousand years?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s how long the \u201cbog butter\u201d that turf cutter Jack Conway found in Emlagh bog in County Meath, Ireland, has been kicking around. Bogs are chilly, high in acid, and low in oxygen, making them very conducive to preservation&mdash;so much so that in 1950, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tollundman.dk\/udseende.asp\" target=\"_blank\">2400-year-old body<\/a> was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/nova\/ancient\/tolland-man.html\" target=\"_blank\">mistaken<\/a> for a recent murder victim. Butter (to return to the less grisly matter at hand) was often <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/a-brief-history-of-bog-butter-180959384\/?no-ist\" target=\"_blank\">buried<\/a> in bogs in past millennia to keep it fresh and protect it from thieves, and present-day turf cutters&mdash;people who harvest peat to burn for warmth in the winter months (and to smoke the malted barley for your favorite Scotch)&mdash;stumble upon chunks of it every so often.<\/p>\n<p>The location of this particular chunk, though, offers another possible explanation for the early Celts\u2019 butter burial. Andy Halpin, an assistant keeper at the Irish National Museum, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/some-guy-found-a-huge-chunk-of-2-000-year-old-butter-in-1781887071\" target=\"_blank\">characterizes<\/a> the spot in Emlagh bog where this large lump was found as \u201ca no-man\u2019s-land,\u201d sitting at the crossroads of three separate kingdoms, so it\u2019s unlikely that whoever sunk this mass was planning on digging it up. It\u2019s possible, then, that it was buried as an offering to the gods.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the motivation for preservation, this butter ball is a big one. Weighing in at 22 pounds, it is technically still edible, though it would take some serious guts to give it a try (you\u2019d have to get past the twigs and dirt on the outside, for one thing). According to Cavan County Museum curator Savina Donohoe, the butter smells more or less like butter. \u201cThere was even a smell of butter in the room it was in,\u201d she <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2016\/06\/14\/man-finds-22-pound-chunk-of-butter-estimated-to-be-more-than-2000-years-old-in-irish-bog\/\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a>. But the more popular consensus is that it smells like a particularly stinky cheese&mdash;and crumbles like one. Andy Halpin concedes that it is probably safe to eat, but, he says, \u201cwe wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s advisable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Archaeologist Caroline Earwood\u2019s article in the <cite>Journal of Irish Archaeology<\/cite> explains that bog butter is sometimes found as a lump&mdash;as in the case of Jack Conway\u2019s discovery&mdash;but often in wood containers, baskets, or skins. So bog butter isn\u2019t as rare as its strangeness might suggest, but it\u2019s still cool enough to celebrate and display. This lump\u2019s new home is a refrigerated case at the Cavan County museum, rather than the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corkbutter.museum\/\" target=\"_blank\">museum entirely dedicated to butter<\/a> in Cork, which must have already met its quota of butter artifacts for the moment.<\/p>\n<p><small><em>Feature Photo Credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/s--M2-f9q0R--\/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800\/dggmssctnjrmwwsyszfn.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">canvasmuseum.ie<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/some-guy-found-a-huge-chunk-of-2-000-year-old-butter-in-1781887071\" target=\"_blank\"> Gawker<\/a><\/em><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Turf cutter Jack Conway finds a 22-pound, 2000-year-old preserved lump of butter in an Irish bog<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":27572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"coauthors":[875],"class_list":["post-27570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cheese-bites"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.4 (Yoast SEO v24.4) - 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