1. Plugrá: The Professional Kitchen Staple
Plugrá has quietly earned a reputation as the American butter you can depend on. Made by the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative in small batches that are slow churned, this butter stands out with its 82% fat content. The name “Plugrá” is derived from the French “plus gras,” meaning “more fat,” reflecting its higher butterfat content.
Pastry pro Michelle Palazzo, who oversees establishments in New York City, says she uses it in all her professional kitchens because it has a higher percentage of butterfat but isn’t so high that recipes need adjustment. In 2009, Plugrá received the American Culinary Federation’s coveted Seal of Approval.
Butter is foundational to a supreme pie crust, and experts have praised it for that purpose. Chef Joey Sergentakis finds it unmatched for the flakiest dough, whereas Palazzo and culinary instructor Carrie Smith champion it for French-style patisserie.
2. Président: The French Gold Standard Available at the Supermarket
If you only put your faith in French butter, Président is the gold standard to reach for. Known for its depth of flavor and stable 82% fat content, it delivers both the structure and consistency that laminated doughs demand.
Président is widely revered for its authentic brie cheese, yet its domestic butter is perhaps its greatest legacy. Victoria Fisk of the LA confectionery company Bouqedibles describes it as a French butter that is generally considered one of the best in the world.
Chef Tony Park often alternates brands depending on the bake, but switches to more stable butters like Président Professionnel ExtraDry specifically for croissants. For a French pastry chef shopping in America, this is one of the most trustworthy options available on a regular supermarket shelf.
3. Vermont Creamery: The American Butter with a French Soul
Vermont Creamery is a renowned creamery known for producing high-quality artisanal dairy products. It was founded in 1984 with the goal of combining the traditions of French and American dairy production, initially focusing on handcrafted cheeses and butter.
Its cultured butter is made with cream sourced entirely from Vermont family farms through the St. Albans Cooperative. The cream is cultured for 20 hours to create a complex flavor with notes of hazelnut and buttermilk before being churned into butter.
Professional bakers love the flavor benefits that come from the live cultures and higher butterfat content, as well as the reduced water compared to sweet cream butter. Laminated pastries, scones, and all-butter pie crusts come out flakier, coffee cakes richer and more tender, all with the complex flavor and structure that only cultured butter with higher butterfat can bring.
4. Kerrygold: The Grass-Fed Favorite That Crosses Over
Kerrygold is where grass-fed dairy shows up noticeably in the flavor. The butter is golden, with a bold, grassy-sweet richness that stands out on toast and excels in both baking and finishing. Its higher perceived richness comes from cows grazing on lush pastures, producing cream with particularly vibrant flavor compounds.
Much like the packet it’s wrapped in, the butter is a luminous, neon yellow that immediately designates its grass-fed credentials, as the carotene present in grass is what turns butter a rich golden hue. Kerrygold has been making waves for its high standards and won one definitive grocery store butter ranking wholesale, confirming its place as the dairy section’s golden child.
Technically Irish rather than American, Kerrygold is now so widely distributed across the United States that French pastry chefs working stateside routinely reach for it. Chef Tony Park of Angelina Bakery leans on it for flavor-heavy items such as cookies and financiers.
5. Cabot Creamery: Reliable for Everyday Baking, Not for Lamination
From creamy cookie batter to light frostings and smooth cake mixes, Cabot’s dependability comes in handy when everything needs to work exactly as it should. Its reliability comes from uniform fat content and its ability to emulsify smoothly.
Cabot’s salted butter won both best in the world at the 2024 World Championship Cheese Contest and took first place at the American Cheese Society Competition. The co-op dairy company uses nothing but cream from its New England cows and sea salt, resulting in a decadently rich butter with a slightly elevated butterfat content of 83%.
Unlike highly cultured European butters, Cabot’s flavors are cleaner and more neutral, which allows other ingredients to take the spotlight without any overpowering aroma. For croissants or puff pastry, it’s a step below the top tier. For cookies and cakes, it performs genuinely well.
6. Animal Farm Creamery (Vermont): The Cult Butter That Chefs Covet
Founded in 2000 by Diane St. Clair in Orwell, Vermont, Animal Farm Creamery quickly gained cult status among top chefs, including those at The French Laundry and Per Se, where its butter became an essential ingredient in fine dining. The creamery employs traditional dairy methods, producing handcrafted cultured butter made from fresh, raw milk collected directly from the farm. The butter is churned and shaped by hand, giving it an exceptional texture, rich dairy flavor, and delicate aroma.
Produced from a herd of just 10 Jersey dairy cows, Animal Farm’s cultured butter features a remarkable 87% butterfat. A 24-hour culturing process, plus hand-kneading on a wooden table, makes for a spectacularly sweet cream butter that is worth the hype.
This butter sells for around $60 a pound before shipping and rarely goes on sale to the public. Most of it goes directly to Chef Thomas Keller and his restaurant group and a local co-op in Middlebury, Vermont. For French pastry chefs who can access it, this is genuinely as good as anything imported from Normandy.
7. Isigny Sainte-Mère: The Imported Normandy Benchmark
With just pasteurized cow’s milk, salt, and lactic starters, Isigny Ste Mère Beurre d’Isigny won high praise from virtually every taster in The Kitchn’s comprehensive 18-butter test, described as “ultra-creamy and slightly sweet.” Made in the Normandy region of France, this butter is a Protected Designation of Origin product, which means it must be made in a specific location using traditional methods and ingredients.
Chef Tony Park specifically names Beurre d’Isigny Sainte-Mère alongside Président Professionnel ExtraDry as his choice for stable croissant butter. It’s not produced in America, but it’s widely available in American specialty stores and is the standard that American-made butters are frequently measured against.
For a French pastry chef, this is home. The protected origin designation ensures that no shortcuts are taken in production, and the flavor profile reflects that consistency. It’s the butter equivalent of a reference point.
8. Land O’Lakes: The American Standard With Limitations
American-style butter is most commonly known as “sweet cream butter,” and most American-style butters weigh in right at the 80% butterfat mark. Land O’Lakes, a name synonymous with butter in the United States, sits exactly at 80%.
Land O’Lakes sits squarely in the mainstream butter lane for a reason: it’s consistent, clean, and reliable. The salted version has a measured salt hit that enhances bread and vegetables without overpowering. It doesn’t have the pronounced cultured tang of some small-batch butters, but that neutrality is actually useful since it won’t compete with other flavors and bakes dependably.
High butterfat butter generally has a more pronounced flavor plus a lower moisture content. Using butter with 17% water, as opposed to 13%, will give unpredictable textural results, and this matters especially in baked goods like croissants and pie crusts, where butter determines both texture and taste. Land O’Lakes works fine for everyday cooking, but French pastry chefs rarely choose it when something more demanding is on the menu.
9. Imperial Spread and Blue Bonnet: The Hard Pass
Imperial Spread is not dairy butter. It’s a budget margarine made from vegetable oils, emulsifiers, and flavorings. It spreads straight from the fridge and works on toast or for basic frying, but it lacks butter’s milk solids and water phase that drive aroma, emulsion, and browning. For pastries, pan sauces, or compound butter finishes, it will not deliver butter’s depth.
Blue Bonnet’s “buttery taste” hasn’t changed much over time. The spread features less fat and calories than butter, but with extra preservatives and additives. During testing, the Blue Bonnet stick held its sharp-edged rectangular shape with zero softening after hours at room temperature, and tasted slightly salty before offering essentially nothing else in terms of flavor.
For any trained pastry chef, these products simply don’t belong in a serious kitchen. The absence of real milk solids means they cannot brown properly, cannot build proper lamination, and cannot deliver the aromatic compounds that make pastry worth eating. These are products for a different purpose entirely.
The Butterfat Rule: Why It All Comes Down to Fat and Culture
The key difference between American-style and European-style butters lies in the presence of milk fat. European butters are expected to contain 82% milk fat and above, while American-style butter hovers around the 80% mark. This excess milk fat changes the way butter behaves and tastes.
Higher-fat butters create flakier pastries, richer laminated doughs, and more tender crumb structures. They also have lower moisture, which means less steam and more control in delicate bakes, as Chef Joey Sergentakis of Allendale Social has explained.
The true distinction between American and European butter, beyond butterfat content, is that European butter is usually cultured. Cultured butter is still butter from milk or cream, but with active live bacteria added to milk and allowed to sit and ferment for a period of time. After that fermentation, the milk is churned into butter. That fermentation step is precisely what French pastry chefs are looking for, and why they consistently seek it out whether they’re in Paris or Philadelphia.
Butter is one of those ingredients where the gap between good and great is genuinely perceptible on the palate. French pastry chefs aren’t being precious when they debate brands. They’re solving a technical problem, and the chemistry of fat, water, and culture is the answer every time. The best American butters have quietly closed much of the gap with their European counterparts. The worst ones remind you, in every bite, that cheapness has a flavor.
