Butter is butter, right? Not quite.

As familiar as we all are with the ingredient — drizzled on popcorn, mixed in baked goods, mashed with potatoes or simply slathered on a piece of bread — not all butters are created equal. Sure, you’re aware of salted and unsalted sticks (the unsalted variety is typically used in cooking and baking), and may even be familiar with the difference between American- and European-style butters (the latter have a higher minimum percentage of butterfat). But if you’re a true butter lover in search of the butteriest specimen you can find, what you’re looking for is cultured butter.

No, cultured butter does not spend its free time frequenting museums and operas, it does not have a passport loaded with stamps, nor does it have a very active Goodreads account. When it comes to butter, “cultured” refers to cream that is allowed to ferment or has live bacterial cultures added to it before churning. (Yogurt is a common example of another food that is cultured.)

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All butter used to be cultured. In the days before refrigeration and the mechanical separation of cream, bacteria would have time to ferment at the dairy as it sat out while the cream rose to the top. But once the cream could be separated quickly, or the waiting time could be done in a cool environment that stunted bacterial growth, the cultures weren’t able to work their magic, which is how we ended up with American or sweet cream butter.

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You won’t be able to tell a butter is cultured by looking it at, but you can certainly taste the difference.

The culturing process results in a butter that is slightly tangy, almost cheesy and more complex. “Cultured butter tastes different: the bacteria produce both acids and aroma compounds, so the butter is noticeably fuller in flavor,” Harold McGee wrote in “On Food and Cooking.” It’s also just more buttery in general than noncultured butters. “One particular aroma compound, diacetyl, greatly intensifies the basic butter flavor itself,” McGee wrote.

And while there are no set standards when it comes to butterfat, cultured butters tend to be on the higher end of the spectrum. “Cultured butters are generally premium butters, done to European standards, which have a tradition of higher butterfat,” “Butter: A Rich History” author Elaine Khosrova said via email. S0 typically they’ll be at least 82 percent butterfat.

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You can find cultured butter in most large grocery stores. And if not, you can culture your own cream by mixing it with buttermilk to make cultured butter at home.

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Outside of simply spreading on toast or using as a dip for radishes, you can use cultured butter in any dishes you would use noncultured butter. However, because it is more expensive, I prefer to reserve it for recipes where the butter flavor can truly shine, such as shortbread, sugar cookies, pie crust and biscuits. And I haven’t tested it myself yet, but “Homemade cultured butter also makes incredible browned butter,” America’s Test Kitchen editor Paul Adams wrote.

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