People who live on the East and West coasts love to debate which side is best. They fight over whether it’s better to have all four seasons, as they do in the East, or to enjoy mild temperatures all year long in California. They also fight over personality differences. Is it better to be West Coast “nice” or East Coast “kind”?
But the biggest East-versus-West beef must have been in the ‘90s, when the country debated which side had better hip-hop. Were you a fan of Jay-Z and Biggie in the East or Snoop and Tupac in the West?
Not to create more cross-country rivalries, but one debate that has flown under the radar is whose butter is better. Unless you’ve lived on both coasts, you probably don’t know that moving across the country may require a new butter dish. Apparently, it comes in different shapes on each coast.
A butter dish company on Amazon has a map to show you whether you have “Elgin sticks” or “Western Stubbies”:
What’s the difference between East Coast and West Coast butter?
Both coasts buy butter in ¼-lb sticks, but East Coast butter is cut into longer sticks measuring 4 ¾” long and 1 ¼” high. Butter on the West Coast is cut stubbier, measuring 3 ⅛” long and 1 ½” high.
The main difference is that the dairy industry began many years earlier on the East Coast than on the West. In the late 1890s, things became standardized when butter manufacturers began using the “Peters’ Package,” a cardboard box with wax paper inside to package their butter.
Created for National Biscuit Company’s Uneeda Biscuits, creameries found the new packaging was much more appealing than buying balls of butter that were scooped into cheesecloth. At that time, people bought butter in one pound sticks. But in 1907, a Swift & Company creamery received a letter from its New Orleans unit stating that the chef of the Checker and Chess club “would like to be supplied with butter in ¼ pound prints which would enable him to slice off for table use without waste or delay.”
The new packaging caught on, and four ¼ sticks replaced the pound chunk. Butter on the East Coast was produced using a machine called the Elgin Butter Cutter, which standardized sizing.
The West Coast gets in on the butter game
As people began to move to the West Coast, there wasn’t a lot of dairy production outside of liquid milk. But, as California grew to become the country’s largest dairy manufacturer, the Elgin machines were no longer available. So, California butter manufacturers used more modern equipment that cut butter into fatter sticks, known as “Western Stubbies.”
People on both coasts have become accustomed to their own types of butter, and, in 2007, Land O’Lakes began producing longer and stubbier sticks to cater to different markets.
In the grand scheme of the great East Coast versus West Coast rivalry, the shape of butter probably won’t lead to a civil war any time soon. But it’s charming to know that everyday staples can hold a bit of regional history.
