french butters

Good butter can be an ingredient, a finishing touch, or the simplest course of the meal. Serve it at a cool room temperature with crusty bread, or choose a format suited to butter for baking when texture and consistency matter in pastry.

In savoury cooking, use a clean unsalted butter to baste lobster, enrich a sauce for pasta, or finish a seared steak. On a celebratory table, a restrained, creamy base is also a classic companion to caviar.

Explore the collection by use and flavour: keep a versatile butter for daily cooking, then add a salted or flavoured selection when the butter itself should be part of the experience.

Table butter or baking butter?

For bread and serving at the table, choose by flavour and salt level. For a recipe, match the specified salted or unsalted butter and pack size. Laminated pastry may call for a specialist format: browse butter for baking and check each product's intended use rather than assuming every table butter is a pastry sheet.

Compare the French butter selection

Choice	What to compare	A useful starting point
Bordier	Plain, salted and individually flavoured butters	Bordier Doux for an unsalted option; Bordier salted butter for the table
Échiré	The salt level and pack format listed on the product	Échiré butter for bread, cooking or recipes that match the chosen format
Beillevaire	Churned butter and separately identified flavoured preparations	Beillevaire baratte butters; check the selected variant and availability

Salted, unsalted or flavoured?

Doux means unsalted. Salted butter adds seasoning as well as richness; use the product's own label to judge its salt level. Choose unsalted butter when you want to control salt in a recipe. Seaweed, yuzu, pepper and other flavoured butters are useful finishing choices, but their added ingredients also change how they work in cooking.

For a first comparison, taste a plain and a salted butter on the same bread. Then try a flavoured option with food that suits it. Read each pack's storage instructions and serve only the portion you need.

For a practical comparison of everyday uses, read Table Butter vs Baking Butter: How to Choose.