My hilarious friend and fellow Southerner, Hope, posted a TikTok not long ago - mid toast bite - about whether or not French or Southern people put more butter on bread. Immediately I answered to myself, “Southern, no doubt about it.” My partner Henry, however, would beg to differ; he’s from New York and is French.
He’s not your stereotypical Frenchie: no cigarettes, he’s charmingly unpretentious, and you’ll hear more Brooklyn in his cadence than anything else. But he’s fluent, his mom lives there, and he’s spent his life weaving through French grocery store aisles. Consequently, the guy knows his butter just as much as I know mine.
I’d never been to France before I met Henry and now, my all consuming love for it is the least unique thing about me. I shamelessly try desperately to be like the other chic women in his family, knowing full well my toes have never seen the inside of a Chanel flat and I’m likely to misgender every noun I say.
But when it comes to le beurre, I can hold my own. My hair might not be effortlessly tousled, but I’ll blend in just fine with the fat slab of salty butter I’ll smear across bread at the breakfast (and lunch and dinner) table.
Henry and I had been together for a few months when he first invited me to come stay in France, where he was visiting his mother. I flew to meet him in the middle of summer on a sticky, delicious afternoon and he picked me up at the tiny airport near Biarritz. Granted, I was falling in love with him so my memories of this pickup are recalled through a rather rosy lens.
Nonetheless, he was tan and freckled and smelled even better than I remembered, now like saltwater and sun dried laundry. He handed me a fistful of dahlias from his grandmother’s garden and a baguette sandwich wrapped in a kitchen towel (...swoon).
I took a bite of it and quickly devoured the whole thing: fresh bread, saucisson, and butter slathered on so thick my teeth made imprints in it. I could have wept from pure glee, standing there with someone I loved eating this perfect, unfussy, buttery delicacy.


I could drone on and on about everything I’ve now eaten in France in the years since, each dish an essay in and of itself, but I’ll never forget that sandwich and the way really good, shockingly salty French butter tasted when it first hit my tongue. I was scared to tell my own mother that maybe I was turning on our kind (butter-loving-Bitter-Southerners).1
My mama is from east Tennessee and raised her three girls on butter-forward sauces, cakes, and crusts. If there was no butter in the fridge, there were always more blocks of it in the freezer. We went through sleeves of the stuff nearly as fast as we went through mayonnaise (arguably, the only other staple we could duke it out with the French about). It was always the not-so-secret-ingredient: whipped with sugar into frosting, melted for graham cracker pie crust, drizzled over Kentucky Butter Cake. It’s cut into dough, spread on cornbread, folded in with cheese grits. I learned early on to never shy away from it, and to always pass it to the right.
I’ve landed on the take that maybe the French have quality, but we’ll always have quantity. But maybe there’s no real need to choose sides; butter is meant to be shared, after all.
We’ll drive to Virginia to visit my family and butter will be kept in a butter bell on the counter, ready for spreading onto biscuits. We’ll fly to France where I’ll gawk at a whole wall of parchment wrapped butter blocks at the store and I’ll know the right one to stock the family fridge with.


We’ll come home to Brooklyn with salty, expensive butter in the fridge, reserved just for the bâtard we’ll pick up from the bakery, and a freezer full of backup-bricks, finding perfect cultural harmony with my favorite fat.
I’ll leave you with the aforementioned Kentucky Butter Cake recipe. There are many iterations of it: Nancy Silverton did a great one, as did the NYT. Some have bourbon or sherry. But this one2 is my favorite. It’s simple, to the point, and so damn buttery…just like I like it.

A plug for one of my favorite publications.
This is the exact recipe by Nell Lewis, from the Pillsbury Bake-off context in 1963, except with the small adjustment of mixing the dry ingredients prior to adding the wet ones, which prevents over-mixing.
This brought me so much joy today! 💕 (Henry 🥺)
Love love allll this deliciousness!