h a l f b a k e r yA few slices short of a loaf.
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It's a rock when it comes out of the fridge. I've tried to use a marble covered jar on the counter to keep butter in a spreadable state without melting completely in my tropical climate. French but not cooling enough.
This is a butter dish/jar with a Peltier device in the lid, powered by existing
indoor light energy. This device only needs to reduce the ambient indoor temp of ~80° a few degrees to ~68,° where butter is spreadable but not collapsed and melted. It does not have to be very efficient and will not be in direct sunlight.
Can also be used to keep guacamole and salsa at the correct temp.
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Have you considered moving to a habitable climate? |
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By habitable you mean someplace with winter? Hah. |
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By winter you mean someplace the mosquitos have the good sense to die off for several months each year? |
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//powered by existing indoor light energy.// |
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This is the tricky part, but it can be made to work. You don't need a full duty cycle for the delta T mentioned, so let's say 25W. In full sun, you could do that with a 45x25cm solar panel, but I'm going to double that to reduce the light demand, so your panel will be a somewhat unwieldy 45x45cm a standard panel size. |
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Now, light. To get to 1/2 sun power for a typical kitchen you'll need about 8kW of light power, with LED efficiency that's around 18kW of electrical power. That's a lot of heat. |
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On balance, probably better to plug this device into the wall. |
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A smarter idea would be a butter dish with a phase-change material built in with the phase change occurring at the ideal temperature. Then, you take the butter out of the fridge and it warms up, then hangs around at the ideal temperature for a loooong time, days possibly, with insulaiton. |
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[bsU] Yes! The object is to make the butter usable over time, not to make a fancy dish. The tech requirements for powering a Peltier device seem unwieldy after reading your note. |
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Would you hold the PCM inside the hollow base of a flat covered dish? Would a lidded jar encapsulating the PCM be more efficient? I chased some tech down to salt hydrates or eutectic mixtures which can be tailored to melt points. |
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The PCM route sounds good. Take the cold butter out of the fridge a couple of hours (?) before you cook or set the table and enjoy several hours of spreadability in 80 - 92°average local temps. Put it back in after dinner. Easy peasy. |
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There's an opportunity to redesign the butter dish or pot for ergonomics as well. Rounded inside corners matching the radius of the spreader would be nice. It could be a butter trough instead of a flat dish, with a cover. The materials and mfg don't sound that expensive either. Molded composite or fired porcelain or stoneware. Fancy blown glass, etc. |
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This may be more fully baked than I thought. |
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Can we not combine this with the conputer that does nothing but create a bit of heat? |
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One handy material that changes phase in the temperature range where butter goes from solid>soft>melted is butter. This is useful since there's good evidence that this is available on site. Even more helpfully, in this scenario, the butter will soften from the outside in. Avoiding the mess associated with mining into the center of a big lump of butter for the soft stuff. |
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So let me get ths straight. You have a piece of butter which you wish to preserve at its optimal phase-change temperature, and so you place it in a box made of butter, which changes phase at the appropriate temperature. But you don't want the box made of butter to melt, so perhaps best to stand it on a large plinth made from butter. The base of the plinth stands on the kitchen floor, and we don't want the base of the plinth to melt, so maybe also make the kitchen floor out of butter as well. The kitchen walls and furniture now constitute a dangerous source of non-butter-phase-change temperatures, so make them out of butter as well. Am I on the right track? Should we expand this line of thought to the rest of the house, the neighbourhood? Is this what the EU butter mountain was intended for? |
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that, or just have a block of butter big enough that it acts as its own PCM. Back of the envelope calculations suggest a 1kg block lasts 8hrs at even a fairly warm 35C. A butter dish would slow this, so you could use a smaller amount. |
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We don't have this problem here, yes it snows, but it's a good idea for places which do... |
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//you could use a smaller amount.// |
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Why would you want to use a smaller amount of butter? |
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<Pondering...>
Following on from the "butter is the best insulator for butter" theory;
If you construct your block of butter from thick slices, separated by grease-proof paper b|b|b|b|b, you can take the first slice off, use the INSIDE (previously protected) surface for your sandwiches or whatever, then (with a convenient press, available now!) turn that (damaged) slice into a uniform-but-thinner slice & put it at the "back end" (or even get fancy & cut it up so the corners become the centre). Eventually, slices will get too thin; smoosh 2 together to regain usefulness. Can be returned to the fridge overnight to "reset".
So you get a continuously-protected "core" of useable butter, while the outside does whatever. |
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If butter is butter's best PCM then we follow Julia Child's first principle: more butter. |
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The problem with a big block is time. In a home kitchen by the time you are done cooking and are setting the table a 1kg block will be soft and gooey all over, sitting in a puddle of clarified butter. Putting the unused portion back into the fridge means the next time you use it it is discolored and not the right consistency unless you dig into it below the melt/collapse. The following serves to preserve the unused portion without exposing the pats to air, but still uses the PCM feature to maintain consistency. |
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Stack pats vertically, separated by flaps of neutral material that are connected on one of the 4 sides by a connector with a tab.(Like using a box of hole reinforcements for 3-hole paper when you pull the tab. Mechanics would be different.) Pulling the tab takes the seal off the top pat, letting it melt as it will. You're going to use it next. As you need more pats, you pull the tab until the stack is used up. |
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Butter could come already patted and separated, put into a special butter dish to accommodate the pulltab-and-separator system, ready to go after a few moments of tempering for the top pat. You'd buy your butter by the foot, not the pound. |
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