Frididaire Butter Warmer compartment

[paul_brown]

my grandmother had a Frigidaire circa late 50's/early 60's
refrigerator over freezer unit with an exclusive Butter Warmer compartment. Is was a great invention that had a thermostat to control butter softness. Butter (not margerine)was always kept spreadable. When was this feature discontinued and why? Some of the best appliance designs and innovations were by Frigidaire, as the famous Jet Cone washers. For some reason these old great designs were scrapped. I can never understand why.

 

[rp2813]

Coldspot Too

I snagged a couple of early 60's Coldspot bottom freezer models for my sister to outfit kitchens in a couple of places she lived. I'm not 100% sure about who the real manufacturer was but both of them had a switch for "soft" or "hard" in the butter compartment. I really liked that feature as it did a great job keeping butter spreadable when set to "soft" and don't know why modern fridges don't have this, considering they have wiring in their doors for all sorts of other bells and whistles.

 

[scoots]

I miss my Butter Warmer too

In the 70's we had a refrigerator (a Kenmore I think) which had the same feature and it was a godsend. I hate hard butter and this was a perfect solution to leaving it on the table all day.

I will leave it to the butter-informed members to say exactly why the feature was discontunued, but I have assumed that it had something to do with the apparent conflict of putting a warming element in a refrigerating device.

I seem to recall the butter feature disappeared right about the time appliance efficency became the crisis du jour.

 

[gadgetgary]

Butter Boat

I mentioned this to several people at the wash-in in Tucson, and noone had heard of it. The concept is like that of the butter warmer in the Frigidaire.....keeping the butter soft and spreadable as well as fresh.

http://www.qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx?app=detail&params=item^K74491,frames^y,from^se,cm_scid^srch,cm_ssi^Item:%20K74491

 

[gadgetgary]

The butter warmer

Was also a feature in the Hotpoint refrigerator that we had when I lived as a child in my parent's house.

 

[rapunzel]

Hi,

New member here butting in. I totally agree about great designs falling by the wayside. I've got a 30 year old Whirlpool fridge in my garage and it has one of those wonderful butter conditioners. It, btw, still works perfectly. Don't know when they stopped butter conditioners, but noticed them missing when I got my new sxs in '95, much to my chagrin.

Since then I've resorted to buying blended butter, which is spreadable straight from the fridge. The climate here spoils butter quickly, if it is left out too long and often.

I could leave the butter in my old fridge, but I'm too lazy to make the round-trip.

 

[thor]

The butter compartment was surrounded from the interior side by one or two ribbon resistances which could be switched on or off. The Hard setting meant no resistance, medium and soft settings meant one or two resistances on. These resistances were in design alike the "boullion" resistances used to keep humidity off certain spots of the refrigerator compartment. Remember the "Low Humidity-High Humidity" setting on many older refrigerators, including GE's of the 70's?

The problem with these warm butter compartments was that butter kept safe at this temperature for a week at the most, and nobody took notice of this (not even the user's manuals!).

Furthermore, as previously mentioned, this meant a lower efficiency for the whole unit.

 

[jeb]

butter conditioner

We had a bottom freezer GE with the butter conditioner for years- it was great. We never found butter to go bad even after weeks in it. Since its no longer with us we leave the butter on the counter in a cover butterdish and have never had any trouble with it.

 

[mixfinder]

Better Butter

We had a Frigidaire Custom Imperial with the bottom freezer. It had every convenience but birth control, the butter server being one of them.
Butter is all fat. Fat is used a preservative to protect and store food without refrigeration.
I'll never understand why I find the butter dish, ketchup, mustard, jam, pickles etc, which are preserves, devised to save food from spoiling, in the fridge.
I bake almost everyday so I always have 2 pounds of butter and 6 eggs in the cupboard above the mixer along with the rest of the baking supplies.
Kelly

 

[bajaespuma]

To schmeer, or not to schmeer...

Butter, like many other animal fats, can go rancid and grow mold given enough time and heat.

We had the TOL GE bottom Freezer 1962 refrigerator that also had a butter "conditioner" and it worked wonderfully and we never had a problem with it. I think the trend towards energy-saving appliances must have killed the butter conditioners on the TOL units because they made their "numbers" worse. When you think of it, it seems silly to put butter in a machine that you pay the utility company to keep it cold just to pay more in utilities to run resistance coils designed to undo that function.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

I wonder what company had it first. My 1951 GE 2-door has a butter warmer.

Ken

 

[mixfinder]

Don't buy green bananas

I have reached the age I don't buy green bananas in case I go before they are ripe. I know that all fats, given enough time can rancidify although in my 55 years I have never had that experience or witnessed it with butter. I have, however, stuck my nose in a few yellowed and stinky Crisco cans. I was simply unware that mold could grow on salted butter. I have the get out the petri dish and see what can happen. Ingredients in my house turn quickly. I average 35 pounds of flour of week and butter, eggs etc to match.
Kelly

 

[brisnat81]

In our climate over here butter goes rancid if left out of the fridge. If you keep it in a butter dish during summer you usually end up with oil, or else it needs to be replaced every second day.

We have to refridgerate almost everything, Jam, Pickles etc if cross contaminated grow mould easily and the easiest way to be sure is to just keep them in the fridge.

Sauces tend to be ok, but thats probably because you dont ever get inside the bottle.

 

[58limited]

Both my 1951 GE and my 1954 Frigidaire have butter conditioners - I love them. I've seen the butter conditioners in ads from the late 1940's, but don't know when they first came about.

 

[jeb]

making butter better

I am president of a local history museum and for many events in the area we do demostrations of pioneer living. For one of the demos we churn butter from cream. After the butter is churned it is "worked" to remove the buttermilk and then if it is to be stored it is rinsed several times until the water runs clear, if this is done it will store for long periods of time. It's the milk that spoils, not the butter (pioneers did not have refrigeration and used this method for making and storing butter).

 

[mixfinder]

Mold

We made our own butter as kids and mom made us wash it well so it wouldn't taste sour. We pressed it into blocks using a butter mold. That was the only mold I ever saw on butter. Pickles are pickled and ketchup is cooked and jam is boiled in a high concentration of sugar so they could be stored on the shelf, for years, long before anyone heard of refrigeration. The USDA requires ratios of ph, sugar, fat, salt and other additives or any combination of the before mentioned before it can be sold legally in the USA

Kelly

 

[sudsmaster]

Rancidity and spoilage/mold are two different processes.

Fats go rancid because their unsaturated bonds link up with oxygen from the air and create something like sticky drying paint (linseed oil, the base for oil paints, is a highly polyunsaturated oil). Fats that go rancid the fastest are those with polyunsaturated bonds. Depending on the cow's diet, butter is mostly saturated fat, and therefore will keep much longer at room temp than polyunsaturated oils like canola, corn, or safflower oils, which oxidize relatively quickly on exposure to air, heat, and light. Acids, salts, and heat will hasten their oxidation. Peanut oil is mono-unsaturated and has fewer unsaturated bonds, so it keeps longer and is better for deep fat frying. Olive oil is magical and while not well suited for deep frying it can keep a very long time and is quite healthy to consume as well (at least the extra virgin type).

Mold/spoilage is different and involves fungal or bacterial growth on the non-fat portions of the butter, such as milk solids. I've never seen moldy butter, but then I'm not in a hot desert region. Incidentally, mold on refrigerated cheese can be avoided by sealing the cheese in an evacuated plastic bag, such as a Seal-a-meal product. Mold needs air to grow, and the vacuum is enough to prevent mold growth.

Since they got the trans fats out of soft margarine, that's mostly what I use on the occasional toast, etc. For baking though I prefer to break out the butter (I keep some in the deep freeze) and use that instead. Trans fats are quite nasty and responsible for a lot of high cholesterol/coronary disease in this country. There is no safe amount of trans fats for one's diet.

 

[paulg]

Hotpoint butter warmer

We too had the Hotpoint 1958 fridge with the butter warmer. The butter was always soft. After decades of use never did we get sick. Loved that feature. Nothing more than a resistor mounted to a metal plate and a rheostat. Simple and effective. Conversely that fridge had the huge vegetable bin with the hinged lid that was supposed to keep it closed but instead always sprung the lid open. Silly little quirks we just learned how to laugh at and live with.