EAST COAST BUTTER VERSUS WEST COAST BUTTER

There is a difference between East Coast* and West Coast* butter. The difference has to do with the size and shape of the packaging rather than the makeup of the butter itself. On the East Coast sticks of butter are long and skinny, while sticks on the West Coast are shorter and fatter. Butter used to be sold in one-pound blocks, wrapped in parchment paper and packaged in a cardboard box, until 1906, when a big buyer of butter from a restaurant in New Orleans asked if the butter company could sell butter in packs of four quarter-pound sticks rather than one big lump. They obliged, and the sticks were a hit. At the time, the town of Elgin, Illinois was known as the Butter Capital of the World, home to the famous Elgin Butter Company since 1871. It was with their Elgin Butter Cutter that the East Coast butter size was determined, and that's how the name “Elgin Stick” was derived. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the West Coast really got into the butter making game. Once the West Coast finally caught up with dairy production, the Elgin-style machines were no longer available. The replacement machines packaged butter into short, fat sticks that are now known as “Western Stubbies”. Today, companies like Land O’ Lakes continue to produce butter of both sizes to satisfy the stick preferences of the respective coasts. *It appears that the actual divide today is east and west of the Rocky Mountains.

Elgin Stick (top) and Western Stubby (bottom)