To those of you who have never heard of an Easter butter sculpture, I can guess that you will already be leaning toward believing butter molded to look like a lamb might be a little wacky. But for the rest of us who grew up knowing such a tradition as normal, Easter butter sculptures seem akin with a holiday ham. Does your Easter tradition involve a butter lamb?
As a Midwesterner, I've come to expect boxes of butter lambs on grocery shelves as Easter approaches. Some versions are prettier than others, including little ribbons and crosses, but they are displayed front and center in the dairy aisle. So, when a friend posted a photo of one of these grocery store displays on Facebook this week questioning the butter lamb's very existence, I felt conflicted. I wanted to explain that these are commonplace in some parts of the country. However, the concept started getting under my skin and, having never purchased one, I suddenly started to question the molding of butter.
The butter lamb is a Polish-Catholic tradition, so I'm told, but it is fully embraced by the same Midwestern folk who have butter sculpture competitions on display at their local and state fairs (full disclosure: I am one of these Midwestern folks). Created using a plastic mold, the butter is shaped and displayed, often on a pretty plate, on the Easter dinner table.
Although I don't partake in the butter lamb tradition, I can't quite go against my roots and dismiss it as wacky. What's wrong with a little butter sculpture for Easter?
Do you serve a butter lamb for Easter? Do you dismiss it as wacky?
Related: How To Make a Butter Lamb for Easter
(Image: Wegmans.com)
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We had them every year. We would await the arrival of the butter lamb from my grandfather.
I think it is a charming tradition. I usually don't get one anymore but come to think of it, if I see one at the store, I'll probably buy one.
I thought everyone had butter lambs.
where in the midwest is this popular? i grew up in indiana and this is the first i've heard of it. then again, we never participated in daylight savings time either.
Never hear of it. I am from the Northwest, but my husband is from a Midwestern Catholic family and he wasn't aware of this tradition either.
That said, if I saw butter molded into the form of anything for sale at the grocery store, I would be all over it.
Never saw it here in the north east...kinda cool though
My mom and I were JUST talking about this! My family is Polish Catholic and we always have a butter lamb with Easter breakfast. I actually inherited a plastic mold from my grandma when she passed.
I don't think molding butter is that much weirder than dyeing hard boiled eggs, no?
What?!? My family is super Polish and super Catholic, granted not from the Midwest. I have never heard of this. I would totally buy one though.
LOVE the butter lamb. North Easterner, and grew up Jewish, but we seem to have a decent Polish population around here, because I always see them in the stores around Easter. Krusciki, too -- those bow-tie shaped cookies covered in tons of powdered sugar!
Never seen this (live in N. California) but I think it is darling. I want one!
I'm from St. Louis and had never seen one of these until I moved to DC. Really weird. I have no idea why I would want to decapitate Jesus (or a sheep) at the table...
I've always had a butter lamb for easter. Some years they're prettier than others, but they've always been a part of my easter table. (For the record, I'm from the Northeast)
it's not easter until the butter lamb is on the table! grew up in chicago, though...
I use to sculpt ARMIES of these as a child for our easter tradition! My grandmother would employ me to make them for all of her friends. My dead line was GOOD FRIDAY. I would swirl "butter fur" using a tooth pick, and use cloves for eyes.
Being Polish/Catholic it was a HUGE tradition to have our easter baskets blessed on Saturday before Easter. It was a time to make a fuss about your easter basket (decked out with the best kitchen towels, bread, salt and pepper shakers, easter eggs, etc...) and the butter lamb made the basket all the prettier. The idea is then you takes the blessed basket/food home to share for Easter with your family.
Although I no longer participate in this, I think of it every year and it brings back memories that are overall good. ((Quirky, but good.))
It's definitely a Buffalo, NY thing! We had one every year - Easter wasn't Easter without the butter lamb! The big thing was to travel up to the Broadway Market to get the butter lamb and sausage and pierogies.
maybe it's just a Chicago Polish thing, because we too always had butter lambs. Not Easter without! Now I live in New England and I saw them at our local market... really gave me warm and fuzzies.
I've never heard of it, but I think it's kind of awesome. I will get one if I see it.
I moved to Minnesota for college, and the grocery store here is the first place I ever saw them, having lived in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Texas previously.
They're a bit odd, but no more so than our traditional turkey-shaped Thanksgiving candle. Also, Minnesota seems to be a real fan of the butter sculptures.
The butter lamb is a staple at our Easter celebration!
We made one every year, with peppercorns for eyes and caraway seeds for the nose. But I had no idea you could BUY them already made! Or that there were molds for them. Cool!
My Philly Suburb family is down with the butter lamb and always serves it with Kielbasa (sausage) and Babka (cheese bread) for Easter Brunch.
I've never heard of it before. I think it's cute!
Yes. I would be surprised to find an region with a stronger butter-lamb tradition than Buffalo, NY. We have a heavy Polish-Catholic population.
As mentioned, there is one specific market called the Broadway Market, on the east side of the city, and they get mobbed every year with shoppers for butter lambs and traditional Polish food. But all the grocery stores stock them too.
We always had a butter lamb at Easter! (The same one that's pictured in this post) My brothers and I thought it was kind of creepy though, because my grandmother would stick cloves in for its eyes... it wasn't until college, researching my family's cultural culinary traditions, that I learned that it was a Ukrainian custom to have shaped butter studded with cloves, especially at Easter. Mom-mom's parents emigrated from Ukraine, so I'd imagine that's where she learned it... she was my dad's mom, and she's been gone over 10 years now, but my mom still carries on the tradition!
How funny...I'd never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago when a friend of mine who moved to Chicago was musing about getting one. I wasn't even sure if it was a kind of butter or a kind of lamb!
Would feel a bit awkward about using it (esp with the lamb symbolism at Easter)...like do you stab the lamb? Decapitate it? Yikes!
Yes, having lived in Buffalo, NY and now Chicago, the butter lamb tradition is very rich. I grew up in So. Cal so when I first encountered it in college I thought it was pretty weird but now I have come over to the dark side.
Huh! This is definitely new to me, but it seems kind of cute. I don't celebrate Easter but if I did, I might seek one of these out.
I just saw one of these for the first time in the grocery store last night! I'm Jewish, so I don't have any Easter traditions other than eating Cadbury Eggs (delicious, delicious Cadbury Eggs) and was completely unaware of their existence. I just moved to a region with a heavy Polish population, though (kenboy and I might live near each other) so it makes sense. I think they're cute - they're not so different than, say, an ice sculpture or a molded fondant figure on a cake.
I was born and raised Californian (and Protestant), so I definitely was not familiar with this. To be honest, when I saw the beginning of the post, I thought it was a joke. I clicked through to see the (mid-)April Fools!
No judgement though! If you have a family that consumes that much butter in a short amount of time, it's kind of cute.
It's funny how many things I thought were "normal" growing up, only to later find out so many people haven't even heard them! We always had a butter lamb at our Easter table (my family is Polish-Catholic as well), along with a lamb-shaped cake covered in coconut frosting and a different butter plate made from two sticks of butter cut and reassembled in the shape of a cross with cloves placed where the nails would have been. Though I'm not religious and don't have an Easter table of my own, I still love the tradition and the idea of molded butter generally. A note to those who think hacking up and eating Jesus imagery is weird: in my family, anyway, it represented the sacrifice Jesus made by dying on the cross (which is remembered at Easter time), and eating it wasn't viewed as any weirder than the Catholic belief that the eucharist at mass is literally the body of Jesus.
I grew up in the Midwest, but my Mom is a Polish-American Catholic from Jersey City. She learned how to make a butter lamb when she was young, and she taught me how to carve a lamb out of a 1 pound block of butter when I was a child. Make the wool by swirling the tip of your knife all around the lamb after it is chilled. You need to pick out two nice sized cloves for eyes and two smaller cloves for the nostrils. I still do it. I think those molded store-bought versions are a little two-dimensional. The lamb becomes the centerpiece of the easter dining table and noone ever wants to take the first pat of butter. Usually start taking the butter from the hind end and leave the head for last.
So what if some people consider it wacky or weird? Lots of traditions are, and that's what makes them charming. I didn't grow up with this tradition but I have no doubt others would find some of my food-related ones weird as well. I hope you don't dismiss this as wacky, but instead embrace it as part of your heritage. Even if you don't partake of it yourself.
Polish Catholic here as well. Never had the butter lamb alhtough it was talked about. Had the lamb cake though EVERY year with coconut on white frosting for the fur and jelly beans for eyes. I still have the mold for the cake.
Ohio is home of the butter cow, and yet I've never seen or even heard of an Easter butter sculpture.
Oh yes! My mom always made her own butter lamb and lamb cake too! I'm from Chicago, not Polish - but grew up Catholic.
Living in the midwest growing up (Michigan and Wisconsin) and being Polish-Catholic, we always had a butter lamb. My babci lived in a Polish area near Detroit and would always buy one, and it had peppercorn eyes and usually some ribbons or decoration. After my family moved to the northeast, there were none to be found in the stores so my Mom bought a mold and started making them herself. I think it's a cute tradition (if a little morbid - but I guess us Catholics love consuming our Christ metaphors).
Wow... that seems like something you could only buy in America.
Italian, Catholic fron South Jersey... We always have these. At Thanksgiving time we have butter in the shape of a turkey.
I think it's...odd. Then again I never grew up religious.
aw, hells yes it was part of our Easter tradition. The head was always the first to go.
Tradition - absolutely! We're Czech-Catholic from Northeast Ohio - always have them. It was my job as a child to go through the dairy counter and find one without a smushed nose! A company in Chicago seems to have the largest distribution today. They added a butter turkey for Thanksgiving recently. Waiting for a butter something for Christmas this year!!!
Oh... and always, every year an Easter Lamb cake! We used to buy them then I found an aluminum (not vintage) mold and we make them ourselves.
oh yes, grew up in Buffalo and had butter lambs every easter. I'd like to say that we went to the Broadway Market for ours, but we usually got them from Tops. I live in Canada now, and had to explain to my in-laws what these were and why they're so great!
In my neighborhood all the delis sell mozzarella lambs.
Oh absolutely a must have. Another Polish Catholic from Chicago, though growing up in AZ we would have to make our own. My job was always to make the tiny purple "peace" flag that stuck off the back. It's a necessary element for the blessing of the baskets - Swieconka - at church. Everything in that basket symbolized something. I looked it up and butter is often shaped into a lamb (Baranek Wielkanocny), reminding us of the goodness of Christ that we should have toward all things. Fancy that. We would all scream as my uncle would wave his knife toward the poor things head in the middle of Easter breakfast. Now that was a key part of the tradition. That and eating butter lamb butt on our rye bread.
What a great blog! My family runs Danish Maid Butter Company in Chicago and we make the majority of Easter Butter Lambs that can be found all around the Midwest! Our original owner started the tradition of mass-producing butter lambs in 1947. Back then they had wooden molds that the butter was pressed into by hand. The molds were then thrown in a bucket of ice water until the butter hardened. Upon removal, each lamb was given peppercorn eyes and a little red ribbon around its neck. We love that the lambs are an Easter tradition for so many families!
The butter lamb has been a Tradition inour Polish Catholic family for almost 100 years. At first we made them by hand, shapinf & curling and drawing the banner with a red cross on a white background & during the War Years making a Polish flag instead. I've purchased a number of the plastic molds over the years, replacing them as they become broken. The lambs are expected by everyone at our table and 1 dear grandson has always started the lamb closest to him by cutting into the head. It's a tradition at our house!
I've never seen this, but as I'm from a family that has a jello mold for every holiday (Easter is a bunny of course) I can't really judge wacky.
I don't think this is wacky at all. I am not Polish or Catholic, in fact I have Amish Mennonite roots and although we did not have a butter lamb at Easter, it was always on the bride and grooms table at weddings!!! Our daughter is getting married very soon and I just made one tonight - obviously was surfing the web to make sure I was doing it correctly when I came across this post - fantastic!!! Don't know if my daughter will recognize the tradition but I just feel I want to do this - mostly for me :). It's been so interesting reading all the comments! Thanks for this post...