Comments about Butters of the World Assortment:

I used these butters in everything requiring butter.

Comments about Butters of the World Assortment:

Received a replacement of the Beurre Barratte de Celles sur Belle. This one was a significant improvement (it was not fishy). However, it still tastes bad: stale and synthetic initial taste, though mellows at the end to be palatable. I still will not put this on bread though.

The overall set is 3 stars, the Beurre Barratte de Celles sur Belle is zero stars.

I did want to say thank you to igourmet for working with us on the difficulties we had with this product: they are an excellent company.

Comments about Butters of the World Assortment:

Received as gift. These were tried on a strong flavored homemade bread (with flavors of coffee, cocoa, wheat and honey), a basic homemade french bread and by themselves. On the stand-alone test, I used a commonly found butter as a comparison.

St. Helen's Goat Butter was our favorite for complexity of flavor. Not as creamy in appearance as the Danish butter. Did not melt as quickly as other butters, in fact will stay integrated (though not hard) at room temperature for several minutes. Is more complex in flavor levels than the others: Starts off slightly salty, then has a "pause" in flavor, then a stronger flavor of salt, then has a very interesting and pleasant hint of cheese flavor, almost like a very mild white cheddar. Ends well.

Danish Lurpak Butter: Close second. By far the smoothest, creamiest texture of any butter I have tried, quickly melting, very pretty, light color. Extremely mild and pleasant, however, lacks gumption and gets lost very easily, particularly with strong flavored bread. Less salty than the others. Starts with fairly imperceptible flavor (more butter sensation than butter flavor), finishes with flavor of tang and salt as it hits the back of the tongue.

The Vermont Sea Salt butter was our third favorite. Much more assertive, can stand up to stronger breads. More yellow in color, melted less quickly than the danish, but more quickly than the goat butter. Not as smooth as Danish in melting, but acceptable. This is more for novelty. It was interesting to get crunches of sea salt before the butter melted completely. Once the butter melts into warm bread, the salt seemed to dissolve. The "tang" of the butter is almost too margarine-like, but "Salt" is the actually the purpose of this butter. This is a very salty butter (of course). I think it would be good on popcorn, but have not tried it. Does better with a strong, slightly sweet bread than the french bread. Had the best packaging.

Beurre Barratte de Celles sur Belle: (please understand that, because this butter was so awful, it might not be representative of this brand of butter. It might be that we got some that was affected in storing or transit. I feel that must be the reason, as this was really that bad.). Frankly this was awful. I actually spat out my bite, and my co-taster remarked at the "fishy" taste and did not finish his. I am not sure if it was fish I was tasting, but it was unpalatable. In fact, it was so odd tasting, that I wonder if we just got a batch that was either bad or shipped with something like fish, and it absorbed the flavors. There was no nutty taste that we could tell for the very short time we tolerated it in our mouths. It was very well wrapped, the packaging was nice. But *OUR* sample of the butter was inedible. I have tried to contact igourmet to see if this was normal for this butter, but as yet have not heard back. If I do hear back, I will try to update this remark.

Overall: While this was a VERY entertaining experiment, I would not order this again except as a novelty gift for someone, as the butters, by and large, did not offer anything so extraordinary to substitute with a good butter one could get even at a grocery store. Two caveats: I might order the goat butter individually, but even that one was not so different as to be considered a "necessity" (though I wonder if the slow melt of this would be of benefit in making pie crusts). I also might order the danish butter if I had an extremely delicate bread or dish that needed butter with the very lightest of touch.

Comments about Butters of the World Assortment:

Three of the butters were exceptional in taste.
One, the French was much too bland for my palate.
Three friends "helping" me with the sampling agreed with my assessment.

Comments about Butters of the World Assortment:

Great product. [...]