Butter Or Margarine? Mealtime Discoveries

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Is it butter or margarine? What was on your family table at mealtime? Are your memories accurate or do your mealtime memories need correcting?

Mealtimes look a bit different in every household. Each family has their own unique habits and customs that practically become second nature. In fact, it can be quite easy to forget that not everyone serves and eats the way we do!

Have you ever gone to a friend’s or family member’s house for a meal and seen something unfamiliar on the table?

Is It Butter Or Margarine?

Melissa Barker (AKA The Archive Lady) from Houston County, Tennessee, has been there! She shares this fun memory with us of discovering a key difference between her and her now-husband’s families:

“When I was dating my husband in 1987, he took me to his Grandmother’s house for dinner one Sunday afternoon. While sitting at the table I noticed something I didn’t recognize. I asked my husband what it was and he said “You know what that is!” I said, “No I don’t”.”

“He said ‘That is a stick of butter!‘”

butter or margarine in yellow butter keeper

“I said, “That is not butter, butter comes in a tub and is yellow.”

“I grew up on margarine, and my husband’s family only used butter. I have been using butter for the past 30 years and my husband never lets me forget that I didn’t recognize the butter on his Grandmother’s dinner table!”

Sarah and Lisa can relate to this as well!

Lisa’s family usually used margarine in tubs and in the stick form, too. The term butter actually referred to margarine. This was the 1970’s after all! Fast forward to present day and only real butter is found in the refrigerator. 🧈

Lisa remembers stories about the butter her grandmother (Sarah’s great grandmother) Cecile Howard used. She would purchase margarine and add in a little packet of yellow coloring to get the right color and make it look like butter.

Sarah also remembers using tubs “butter” – really margarine! – at the dinner table (and rinsing out the empty to use for storing snacks or leftovers), while sticks of “butter” were more often used for baking. Yes, the cookies came out a bit flat. 🍪

She only purchases true butter now.

Thank you for sharing your memory with us, Melissa- we’re glad you and your husband can look back and laugh about it now!