BURYING BOG BUTTER TO IMPROVE THE TASTE?

BURYING BOG BUTTER TO IMPROVE THE TASTE? Annalisa just bought a new cookbook: “fat [sic] : AN APPRECIATION OF A MISUNDERSTOOD INGREDIENT, WITH RECIPES by Jennifer McLagan. She immediately showed me a passage on bog butter. (I posted earlier about an article Annalisa, who knows of my interest in bogs, had sent me about bog butter.) The passage cites an English traveler in Ireland in 1861 who described “Butter layed up in wicker baskets, mixed with a sort of garlic and buried for some time in a bog to make provision of an high taste for Lent.” A book about the Faeroe Islands from 1763 describes sheep tallow being buried to improve its flavor. Over time the tallow came to taste more like cheese. Another opinion: “Some bog butter is edible, if not particularly palatable.”