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Jack Conaway was cutting peat for fuel in the Emlagh bog in County Meath, Ireland, back in 2016 when he made a stinking discovery. Buried twelve feet underground was a twenty-two pound lump of butter estimated to be about 2,000 years old. The surprising thing about this finding is that it is not all that surprising. Hundreds of specimens of so-called “bog butter” have been located across the Emerald Isle. I’ve even seen one. It’s on display at the Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, near the old Butter Exchange, in its heyday the largest exporter of butter in the world. The museum houses all kinds of exhibits which testify to the important role of butter in the economy of Ireland and the lives of its people. You cannot spend any time at all at the museum without realizing that butter is woven into practically every aspect of Irish life. As Ari Weinzweig, the co-founder of Zingerman’s, one of America’s best specialty food stores, puts it, “Butter is in the culture, in the countryside, in