Raw Butter is butter made from unpasteurized milk (aka “raw” milk.)
It has bit more of a tart taste, and goes rancid much more quickly, than butter made from pasteurized milk.
Raw Butters tend to also be sold as organic, unsalted and uncoloured, generally in tubs, meant for freezer storage to counter the shelf-life issue.
They are hard to come by, even in Europe. In America, Raw Butters are legal only in California, New Mexico and Connecticut, though in Connecticut some individual counties have the authority to outlaw it, if they choose.
Some gourmet European butters, such as Occelli butter (“Burro Occelli”) made in Piedmont, are raw butter. It’s made within two hours of the cows being milked, and formed in wooden moulds (the use of wooden moulds alone almost gave EU health officials a heart attack.) Connoisseurs swear by the taste.
Nutrition
Health-food enthusiasts maintain that raw butter contains an undefined “X Factor” that is the missing ingredient causing all kinds of illness nowadays. Some maintain this X Factor binds to bad things building up in your body and pulls them out. They claim that it also contains something they call the “Wulzen anti-stiffness factor.”
Language Notes
In French, Raw Butter is referred to either as “beurre cru” or “beurre de crème crue.”