This Vintage Kitchen Tool Gives Butter A Fancy Look, And It's Making A Glorious Comeback

Vintage kitchen designs and cookware can give your cooking space a stylish, nostalgic feel. But amidst a variety of vintage kitchen appliances is one specialty kitchen tool that's making a comeback and sure to give your butter a fancy look: a butter press. Cottagecore kitchens are trending, so we're not surprised to see the old-fashioned farmer's kitchen tool making a grand reappearance in the modern kitchen. People have fashioned ways to mold butter throughout history as a way to form, demarcate, and provide it with a pleasing visual appeal. These now-vintage butter presses were typically craft-made wooden molds or engraved stamps which became popular in the 1700s and 1800s across Pennsylvania Amish communities as a way to distinguish butter from different farmers. 

With the modernization of dairy production in the 19th century and beyond, the prevalence of farm-made artisanal butter (and their embossed markings) slowly waned. Today, however, influencers are making a buzz to bring back the butter press and sharing ways to use it. In a TikTok post, @condimentclaire shows followers how easy it is to make a decorative butter puck by pressing softened butter into her vintage mold and letting it solidify in the fridge before removing it from the mold and revealing an idyllic cow and farm landscape. Another TikToker, @that.kansas.mama, takes the homestead feel a step further, making butter from scratch with cream, then forming it in a wooden butter mold for an elegant presentation.

If you're inspired by the possibility of a butter press to add a fancy feel and character to your dairy spread, but don't have the space in your kitchen for a full-on wooden butter press, you can also find smaller engraved butter stamps in antique shops and online secondhand shops. To use a butter stamp, fill a ramekin with softened butter, let the dairy product harden in the refrigerator, then stamp the top surface and serve alongside bread to your dinner party guests. 

If you can't find a throwback butter press or stamp, no worries. You can also mold softened butter into a cylindrical shape with parchment paper or plastic wrap, just like you would when making trendy butter candles. Today's home chefs are also innovating the old-fashioned formed butter craze with modern kitchen tools, like flexible silicon candy molds to make cute shapes like shells, hearts, or circles. Just place the softened butter in the molds, let it harden in the freezer, then pop the shaped butter out. This method won't give you as much of a nostalgic feel as butter stamped with vintage emblems like those used by the countryside farmers of yesteryear. But it could still give your table a fancy feel that modernizes the idea that butter presentation far beyond today's average store-bought stick.