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Butter. Just the sound of it gets the juices flowing. In your wildest dreams could you picture a world without it? Why, it’s unimaginable!. Okay, okay, so without it we’d all have smaller bottoms … that’s for sure … but, how on earth could we eat pancakes or mashed potatoes or popcorn sans it’s golden awesomeness? Aunt Jemima would have apoplexy, Idaho would secede from the union and all the movie theaters would have to close. No kidding. Our world as we know it would fade into oblivion.

Did you know that butter is as old as Western civilization? The clever Romans used it as a medicinal salve for aching joints, and swallowed it for relief from sore throats and coughs. The truth is that no one knows for sure who invented butter, but it may have been around 8,000 BC when a traveling African herdsman found that his milk filled goatskins curdled as they jostled across the Serengeti savannas.

Then there’s India. For at least 3,000 years, Lord Krishna has been gifted with tins full of ghee (a luscious, clarified butter). Even the Biblical Abraham and Sarah offered the three visiting angels a celebratory feast of meat, milk and the creamy yellow spread. (The three wise men, I guess, were ignored. Chopped liver.)

What’s interesting is that the oldest known butter-making technique is still in use today. Surprisingly it is remarkably similar to the original … skin a goat, tie up its hide, fill it with milk and begin shaking.

By the 12th century, the butter business was booming across northern Europe. Records show that annually Scandinavian merchants exported tremendous amounts, making it a central part of their economy. Indeed, butter was so essential to life in Norway, that the king demanded a full bucket every year as a tax. Ooofff-dah-licious!

By the Middle Ages, much of Europe was hooked on butter. Peasants used it as a cheap source of protein whereas the nobility loved the richness that it added to meats and vegetables. (Although I have no trouble picturing melted butter sluicing across my broccoli, I do, nonetheless, have an itchy problem with my chewing on chunks of it as a meat substitute.)

For the month of Lent, many pious Christian Europeans abstain from eating their favorite fat. (For that reason alone, they should switch to atheism.) Until the 1600s, butter eating was strictly banned during Lent.

But, going without their golden gob of yummyness tested them. It was a trial. In fact, being butterless proved to be so difficult that the wealthy folks often paid the Church hefty tithes for permission to sneak the golden fat into their mouths during that month of otherwise self denial. Demand for this favor was so high that in Rouen, in Northwestern France, the Cathedral’s Tour de Beurre—or Butter Tower—was financed and built with these devious gratuities.

In Ireland, barrels of ancient butter are among the most common archeological finds. In the past their butter was traditionally buried in bogs for aging. In fact, butter was so critical to Ireland’s economy that merchants opened a Butter Exchange in Cork to help regulate the trade.

By the 19th century in France, butter was in such high demand that Emperor Napoleon III offered a bountiful prize for anyone who could manufacture a substitute. The prize was awarded to a French chemist in 1869, who rendered milk into his beef fat. He called it “oleomargarine.” (I don’t know about you, but that sounds suspiciously like calling a squirrel patty a ground sirloin burger.)

Do you remember when you were a kid and oleo came in a plastic bag? Accompanying this pale beige lump was a small package of yellow dye which you squeezed into the oleo. Then you kneaded and pinched and tweaked and compressed to coerce it into a lump of bogus butter. This was often the job of the children. In the end it was supposed to look—and be—butter. It didn’t fool anybody.

Even the pilgrims were bewitched by butter. They packed barrels of it for their journey on the Mayflower. Thus, in time, butter became an American staple. By the turn of the century, Americans’ annual consumption was an astonishing 18 pounds per capita—nearly a stick and a half per person per week. (I’ll bet their bottoms were big!)

But sadly, America’s love affair with butter was severely challenged during the Great Depression when all the turmoil brought shortages and rationing. Taking advantage of the chaos, it was the shyster oleo’s chance to shine. It was cheaper, made with vegetable oil and yellow food coloring, and dietitians began promoting it for a low-fat diet. In the 1980s, butter consumption took a nosedive when it became declasse. By 1997, American’s annual consumption fell to 4.1 pounds per capita per year.

Since then, however, butter—like Rocky Balboa—has staged a remarkable comeback when researchers discovered that the ingredients in old-style margarine were significantly worse for the heart than the saturated fat found in natural butter. (You see, there is a God!) This has caused more and more Americans to return to their buttery traditions. Butter is back!

But, we must not forget the significant butter role that Austin, Minnesota has had year after year after year. I am talking, of course, of the life-size refrigerated statue of Princess Kay of the Milky Way. Every summer Minnesotans stare agog at her creamy splendor; her uni-colored loveliness … and wonder how delectable she’d be spread on their toast.