One State Makes 88% Of The Butter In The US

California is the unofficial birthplace of fast food and the home state of the oft-debated french dip sandwich (despite its name). The Golden State is also the source of much of the butter you use for dipping, drizzling, baking, and frying, with Pennsylvania coming in second in butter production. However, there's a pretty massive gap in their output.

In 2023, California produced 51.6 million pounds of butter. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania's yield only reached 6.8 million pounds. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, dairy was the state's top agricultural commodity in 2023, followed by grapes (no surprise to fans of Napa and Sonoma Valley's unique winery experiences) and, relatedly, cattle. Next time you bake a cake, butter your toast, or drench a plate of crab legs in melted butter sauce, you know what state you might need to thank.

Dairy production is ingrained in the state's history. According to California State Parks, cattle first arrived in California in the late 1700s with Spanish missionaries. Other records have women making butter shortly after, at Mission San Gabriel.

But California butter has more history. If you've cooked across the country, you'll have noticed that butter on the West Coast is different from that on the East Coast. Butter on the East Coast comes in long, skinny sticks, while the sticks of butter you find at West Coast markets tend to be short and fat. This is because, until the 1900s, butter was sold in large, one-pound bars. A company in Elgin, Illinois — then a major hub for the product –began breaking the butter blocks into quarters. East Coast distributors adopted the Elgin method, while Western producers who lacked access to the same mold developed their own dimensions.