cultured butter

Last fall, I enjoyed a memorable meal at Eleven Madison Park. I would be hard pressed to tell you what I had for breakfast, but I can remember every last detail of that meal, right down to the butter. In part, that may have been because the server made a ceremony of presenting it and pointing out that it was unsalted butter from Vermont. I can't deny that it was good. In fact, it was very, very good. But I would have been more impressed if it had been made in-house.

I distinctly remember wondering, as I ate the olive-studded baguette spread with the very, very good butter, why restaurants aren't making their own butter for table service. It seems a missed opportunity for customization and bragging rights.

Is it cost, time, labor, skill? The cost is on or below par to an artisanal butter and the time and labor are negligible. Making butter is such a basic skill that a five-year-old can produce an excellent product from fresh cream, a jar, and some elbow grease. Anyone who has ever over-whipped cream (raising hand) has unwittingly made butter. What is often viewed as a disaster is, in fact, a small, everyday miracle.

Butter is essentially the fat of the milk. It is an water-in-oil emulsion, composed of 80-82 percent milk fat, 16-17 percent water, and 1-2 percent milk solids. Transforming milk into butter will take place faster and the the yield will be higher if you start with fresh, pasteurized (preferably raw, but not ultra pasteurized) heavy cream. Agitation, whether in a jar (15 minutes of constant shaking), or in a food processor (30-60 seconds), incorporates air, forms bubbles, then fat globules collect in the bubble walls. At this point, whipped cream–a light, stable foam– is formed. If agitation continues, the friction warms and softens the fat globules to a near-liquid state, causing the walls to rupture and the fat globules to cling together, forming larger and larger masses. Knowing this is not necessary to make butter–the miracle will still happen.

After churning, the buttermilk is drained off. This buttermilk is the real deal–light, tangy, refreshing–and to some, the reward of churning your own butter. Ice water is then added to the fat crystals and they are worked together with a paddle or spatula until they are creamy and homogenized.

Making butter is rewarding to those of us who are thrilled by watching matter transform from one state to another, but anyone would be won over by the flavor of freshly-formed, sweet butter. In her new book "Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through The Ages", culinary historian Anne Mendelson describes the taste of homemade butter as " the taste of cream to the nth power, cream newly translated to some rarefied spiritual afterlife." Chemically, the flavor of butter is comprised of over 120 different aroma compounds that include: fatty acids, lactones, methyl ketones, diacetyl, and dimethyl sulfide.

Aside from the inherent flavors in butter, fat has long been recognized as a flavor carrier; a vehicle to deliver whatever flavors and aromas that are put in contact with it. This is why butter is wrapped and isolated in its own compartment in storage. But this capacity to absorb can be seen as an opportunity to infuse flavor. Truffles are often buried in porous foods such as rice or eggs to infuse them with their aroma–why not store them with butter? Or other aromatics: citrus, herbs, porcini, cheese, coffee, chocolate, vanilla beans? Can garlic butter be made more efficiently by storing cut garlic cloves in a closed container with butter? Similarly, a compound butter is made by blending a flavorful or aromatic ingredient into finished butter, but this can sometimes interrupt the texture. What if flavor was introduced into the cream before churning it into butter? The infusion would have to take place at a temperature below pasteurization (185F/85C in the US) or through cold vacuum infusion. One final interesting developement with fat is that it is being studied as the sixth taste, although the actual receptors are still undiscovered.

I've made butter many times (some times, on purpose), but this is my first attempt at cultured butter, which is simply cream that has been soured (with buttermilk) and allowed to ferment or "ripen" at room temperature prior to ageing in the refrigerator. As with all fermentation, bacterial action develops acids and aroma compounds. One in particular, diacetyl, when superimposed with the compounds already present in fresh butter creates a noticeably fuller flavor that carries over into the buttermilk, which is the thickest, richest, and most flavorful that I have ever tasted. If you can resist drinking it all or turning it into amazing biscuits, it can be frozen to ripen the next batch of cultured butter.

ripening & ageing

churning

washing & creaming

Recipe: Cultured butter

umami burger

Wait, wait, don't go…you're at the right place. Really, you are.

I know…I'm giving you a burger. But it's a special burger. Let me tell you why.

First, this is no fast food burger. It's about as slow as it gets. The hangar steak for the burger was marinated for 12 hours, then dry-aged for 3 days. The shittake buns needed to rise (twice) before being baked into soft pillows. The tomatoes were slowly roasted in a low oven to concentrate their flavor, then reduced to a paste on top of the stove. The onions were slowly caramelized, then dried until crisp in a slow oven. Even the cheese was transformed.

But the whole point of this burger is flavor. The kind of synergistic deliciousness that comes from the layering of glutamate-rich foods that produce the taste of umami.

Umami–the fifth taste–is a chemical reaction that takes place on our taste receptors to produce a pleasant savory taste. As far back as 1825, Brillat-Savarin described the taste of meat as "toothsome" which is similar to the Japanese interpretation of "deliciousness". Brillat-Savarin also sagely foretold that the "future of gastronomy belongs to chemistry". As it turns out, it was chemistry that led to our understanding of glutamates, a type of amino acid, and the discovery of the synergy that occurs when foods containing glutamates are combined, the resulting taste is increased and magnified exponentially. [Does that make umami a fractal taste?].

Recently, scientists have uncovered the way that glutamates activates the nerves on our tongues. Referred to as the "Venus flytrap" mechanism, "Glutamate lands on your tongue and nestles into a glutamate-shaped depression on an umami receptor. Upon contact, the receptor–an enormous, folded protein–changes shape and grasps the glutamate. That shape change also activates the neuron that tells your brain you are tasting umami. Inosinate(compound found in meat) and guanylate(compound found in mushrooms) can bind to a seperate part of the umami receptor. Once bound, they tighten the receptors grip on glutamate, increasing its ability to taste up to 15-fold before the receptor relaxes its grip."

To understand this principle, we have only to examine the intuitive use of umami in world cuisine and how it has led to the foods that we crave. In Italy there is the popular trio of bread, tomatoes and cheese that takes on many forms. In the US, we have the burger and fries–an umami symphony of beef, bread, cheese, tomato, and potato. Mexico has its tacos and wide use of cornmeal and black beans. England loves its fish & chips and Australia knows the secret of Vegemite. Every culture has its versions of charcuterie and fermented beverages. But it is perhaps Asia that has the most extensive and refined applications of umami with their use of fermented soy products, seaweed, cured fish, and mushrooms–all sources of highly-concentrated glutamates.

Interestingly, we have glutamate receptors in our stomachs as well as our mouths. When the receptors in the stomach are stimulated, they send a message to the brain, which then sends an order back to the stomach to start digesting. Latest studies show that glutamates may play an important role in our digestion of protein. Wouldn't it be nice if, for once, something that tastes good turned out to be not only good for us, but essential to our health?

……………………………………………………………..

Umami Burger

The beef:

Beef is a glutamate goldmine, particularly when cured or aged. To that end, hangar steak was marinated in soy, fish sauce and dashi, then dry-aged and combined with fresh chuck eye steak.

Dashi–a simple broth of kombu and bonito–is loaded with umami. It contains 3700mg of glutamates per 100g.

Recipe: Umami burgers

The bread:

Breads are a good source of glutamates because of fermentation, a process that unbinds protein molecules and allows the release of bound-up glutamate.

Dried shittakes (used here) contain 1060mg of glutamate(guanylate) per 100g as opposed to fresh, which contain 71mg/100g. The dough also contains soy sauce and fermented black beans to produce an incredibly savory and fragrant bread with a soft texture attributed to the addition of milk and eggs.

recipe: Shittake hamburger rolls

The tomato:

Ripe tomatoes have 10 times more glutamates than unripe. Roasting tomatoes also concentrates the glutamates and deepens the flavor. Kecap manis (sweetened soy sauce) is added in the reduction stage to increase the umami and mimic the ripening.

Most of the umami in tomatoes is concentrated in the seeds and inner membranes, so be sure to leave them in when cooking and strain out later.

Recipe: Tomato kecap

The cheese:

Parmesan has the highest concentration of glutamates among cheese with 1680mg per 100g. As a general rule: the older and drier the cheese, the more umami. Because Parmesan is very dry, it doesn't make a good "melty" cheese–a requirement for a good burger–yet there had to be a way to make it work. Digging through online science journals, I hit on the secret to making processed cheese. It's as simple as using sodium citrate as an emulsifying salt. With just two ingredients–sake (for umami) and sodium citrate– it became possible to turn dry and crumbly Parmesan into a soft and supple sheet.

Recipe: Pliable parmesan

The potatoes:

Pre-cooking potatoes with dry heat is the best way to achieve a crackling-crisp crust with soft, fluffy innards and the microwave is much quicker than an oven.

Scoff if you want, but I make my fries at home in the microwave. On second thought, don't scoff until you try it. The process is so simple and the results so satisfying that you'll wonder why you never did it this way before:

Recipe: Microwave fries

fractal

I was 8 years old when I walked into a department store dressing room and watched in amazement as my reflection bounced back and forth recursively between two parallel mirrors. It was my first glimpse of infinity and though I didn't know it then, I was looking at a fractal.

In 1958, Benoit Mandelbrot, a brilliant young mathematician joined the research staff at IBM. As one of the first mathematicians to have access to high-speed computers, Mandelbrot conceived and developed a radical new geometry that was capable of mathematically describing the real world of Nature. In 1982, he published his ideas in "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" and rocked the world.

Before fractals (which also became known as Chaos Theory), Euclidian geometry was concerned with the abstract perfection that was nearly non-

existent in Nature. It could only describe the imaginary world made up of zero (a single point), the first dimension (a single line that contains an infinite number of points), the second dimension (a plane that contains an infinite number of lines), and the third dimension (a solid that contains an infinite number of planes). None of these could describe the amorphous and irregular shape of a cloud, mountain, coastline or tree. Mandelbrot's fractals were capable of describing the real world of the fourth dimension (a hypercube that contains an infinite number of solids and their relationship to each other in a time-space continuum). The fourth dimension is the world in which we live.

The mathematics of fractals are relatively simple, considering that they describe the indiscernibly complex. Fractals are geometric figures that repeat themselves under different levels of magnification. They are self-similar and recursive. An example would be the irregular and jagged shape of a mountain when viewed from a distance. When a section is magnified, the same shape or pattern is repeated with greater complexity. The pattern repeats itself with increasing detail as it goes on to be magnified to a microscopic scale. Fractals reveal the hidden worlds within a world.

Fractals are found everywhere in nature: mountains, trees, ferns, snowflakes, seashells, bolts of lightning, and the clusters of galaxies. The very planet that we live on is one huge fractal. The human body contains many fractals from the network of veins and capillaries to the folds in our brains, the beat of our hearts, and even our DNA, which is 99.98% similar. Mandelbrot's theory of space-time continuum of Man and Nature in which there is constant change based on feedback is an open system in which everything is related to everything else. Some scientists believe that fractals are the very fabric of the universe. It should come as no surprise that this connectivity has spread beyond the world of math and science and into art, music, literature, architecture, economics, meteorology, trend-forecasting, and even consciousness.

But what about food and cooking?

Certainly, food, be it plant or animal, contain fractal patterns. A perfect example is the beautiful and alien-looking Romanesco cauliflower, whose spires swirl repeatedly in various scales over the pale green heads. An example of a fractal–in a prepared food–would be a turducken (a chicken stuffed in a duck, stuffed in a turkey). And isn't a salad just a vegetable recursion?

As for cooking, could the act of whipping, which is a repetitive motion that changes the volume and texture of a substance with a self-similar expansive network of air bubbles, be fractal? If so, then couldn't the same be true of a reduction? And what about the turns required to make puff pastry? Or the gluten matrix produced in bread by carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol?

And what about flavor…can flavor be fractal?

Would fractal flavor involve repeating a flavor in varying proportions/scales, such as a sandwich where each bite contains the same flavors and textures in slightly different proportions? Or a glass of wine that is a liquid composition of complex flavors and with each sip, we can discern, or magnify, a different element of its flavor? Would a dish composed of self-similar aroma compounds be a flavor fractal? Or one composed of the same flavor in varying textures?

My preoccupation with these questions can, in and of itself, be considered fractal as I zoom in for clarity and answers, I only find more detail and questions. Ultimately, I believe it is a search for connectivity… to myself, to others, to the physical world as well as the spiritual, and, of course, to food.

Soy fractal

fresh soybeans: edamame cone

dried soybeans: soy milk foam (using inherent lecithin in soy)

tofu sphere (with malt)

yuba cylinder (with peanut, miso, and okara)

fried yuba

fermented soy: sweet shoyu sauce

douchi soil

natto

self-similar aromas: soy, peanut, malt (alcohols: sulfurol

guaiacol

aldehydes: valeraldehyde

butyraldehyde

fatty acids: butyric acid

isovaleric acid)

birch wintergreen black currant banana

wintergreen, black currant, and banana nougat with birch syrup glass

I finally received my package of birch syrup. It was a long wait as it had to come from Alaska. You would think that with all of the birch trees in the northeast, that someone around here would be producing it. If they are, they're keeping it for themselves…I can't blame them.

Like maple syrup, Birch syrup is made by concentrating and evaporating tree sap into a syrup. But that's where the similarity ends. It takes 100 gallons of birch sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. With maple syrup, its about 40:1. Birch syrup is less sweet than maple and is predominantly low-glycemic fructose as opposed to maple, which is mainly sucrose.

Birch syrup has a deep, spicy, woody flavor that is tinged with methyl salicylate.

Methyl salicylate is an ester commonly known as oil of wintergreen or betula oil. Esters are a class of aromatic organic compounds that are widely found in nature and are usually described as "fruity". Esters follow a general formula (alcohol + carboxylic acid = ester), therefore (methyl alcohol + salicylic acid = methyl salicylate). Names of esters always end in -ate.

Methyl salicylate is found in high concentrations in the berries and leaves of wintergreen (Gaultheria) and birch (Betula)and in lesser degrees in black currants, cherries, tomatoes, licorice root, fig leaf, pansies and dianthus. It is the prominent flavor of root beer and birch beer.

The primary ester in banana is isoamyl acetate, but bananas also share other esters with black currants: ethyl caproate and ethyl benzoate, which is described as fruity, sweet, wintergreen.

cedar apple streusel

cedar-baked apple pudding

toasted flour and poncillo streusel

apple confit

cherry tobacco gel

cedar brandy ice cream

maple leather

Cedar is a prized aromatic wood that is widely used to line closets and storage chests. Toasting cedar breaks down the sugars in the wood and produces a complex aroma that is decidedly masculine.

With this dish, I've attempted to capture that aroma with the nuances of apples, tobacco, cherry, leather, brandy and molasses.

Baked apples are the quintessential comfort food. Here, I've gone hobo pack with them, tucking in a few sheets of toasted cedar, butter, nutmeg, vanilla, maple syrup and brandy. Their flavor is exquisite.

cedar brandy

Wood is the most primitive fuel used for cooking, yet no matter how high-tech our appliances and techniques become, there is nothing that can replicate the flavor of food cooked over a wood fire or in a wood-burning oven.

Wood also does wonderful things to wine and spirits. During the Roman Empire, winemakers discovered that storing wine in wooden barrels had a profound effect on flavor, color and texture. Further down the timeline, it was noted that oak had the best compatibility with wine and that toasting or charring the inside of oak barrels added favorable characteristics. Today, we know that heating the oak causes the simple sugars (hemicellulose) to break down. These wood sugars transform the body of the wine, softens tannins, enhances flavor with toasty and caramelized organoleptics, and deepens the color of spirits.

Because of the resins in cedar, it has been found to produce off-flavors in wine and it is used almost exclusively in the production of sake. It's curious that brandy is often described as having the aroma of cedar– when it has been aged in oak– and that the aroma of toasted cedar is reminiscent of brandy. These two were destined to be together.

I'm always on the lookout for unique service pieces. These searches sometimes turn up items that could be put to use for purposes that they were not intended for. For instance, this votive holder captured my imagination when viewed as a cup with a hollow bottom–a fun place to hide an unexpected surprise.

Upon lifting the cup to sip cedar-infused brandy, a wisp of cedar smoke is released and the experience is heightened and amplified.

Or, for an added treat: a cedar-infused brandy bonbon with a cedar ice cream center

white chocolate eucalyptus watermelon olive

Eucalyptus is not a conifer. It is an angiosperm (enclosed seeds|pod) and not a gymnosperm (naked seeds|cone). In many other aspects it closely resembles a conifer, most of all in it's fragrant wood and leaves.

The aroma of eucalyptus is largely comprised of the monoterpene eucalyptol (about 70%, depending on the variety), also known as cineol, which gives it the characteristic fresh, spicy and camphoric scent that is shared by rosemary, sage and bay leaves.

I like the way that the fattiness of white chocolate rounds out some of the medicinal qualities of eucalyptus. They both have a cooling effect on the palate, and together they combine into a refreshing flavor.

I also like what agar and gelatin do to ganache. In the right amounts, they provide a toothsome delivery with a creamy mouthfeel and a clean finish. It also allows for doing fun things to ganache, like cutting it into cubes.

Watermelon also has a cooling effect with a green-ish flavor. The problem with pairing watermelon with traditional ganache is textural–when the ganache melts, it coats the tongue, making the wet, crisp watermelon feel odd and doesn't allow the flavor to come through. Altering the texture of the ganache gets around that. Briefly infusing the watermelon with lime juice adds acidity and terpenes that enhance the eucalyptus.

Fresh turmeric is a rhizome in the ginger family with a startling orange color. It also contains eucalytol along with other terpenes that contribute to its earthy and mildly floral aroma.

Black olive croquant is a flavor and texture counterpoint.

Eucalyptus is the only plant on my list of conifers that doesn't live in my yard. Without access to organically-grown eucalyptus, I've been leery of cooking with florist-grade because of the use of pesticides in these products. I picked up a sapling of an apple-scented variety (Eucalyptus bridgesiana) at a garden center last summer and have been nurturing it under flourescent lights. I used the first harvest to make this ganache.

Recipe: white chocolate eucalyptus ganache

In looking at the first photo, I realize that the scale of the dish is ambiguous. Scale is important–the size of a portion is directly related to our enjoyment of it. This dish is intended as an amuse– one or two bites of an intriguing combination that arouses the palate for what is to come. If that were to be more of the same, I'm afraid that the effect would be lost.

Eucalyptus is a genus of evergreen trees and shrubs that is comprised of about 700 species. It belongs to the family Myrtaceae, whose members include cloves, guava, and allspice. It is a native of Australia, where it is also known as blue gum because of its tendency to leak sap from breaks in the bark. They are not cold hardy but are widely cultivated in the tropics and subtropics. The largest consumers of eucalyptus are koalas.

just wondering

Can flavor…

be fractal?
heal?
alter mood?
affect behavior?
be separated from emotion?
transcend its function?
be genetically predisposed?
narrate a story?
paint a picture?
be composed to play like notes on a scale?
be charted as a periodic table?
inform texture?
satiate without caloric energy?
be masculine or feminine?
have a pedigree or hierarchy?
change the way we eat?

If you think you understand flavor and how we experience it, read this.

crab mango spruce pomelo vanilla

In my mind, mango and pine will always be tangled together. I have Luciano to thank for that.

Luciano was a dishwasher at the first restaurant that I worked in. He could rip through stacks of dirty dishes faster than any machine, work any station where he was needed, fix anything that was put in front of him. He also made the most delicate pasta that I've ever tasted. All this, he did with the demeanor of a pit bull, alternately growling and cursing like a sailor, then laughing and smiling like an impish boy. He held everyones respect with his consummate badassness.

He was a man of many talents and just as many peculiarities. For one, he had a habit of chewing on pine twigs, of which he kept a fresh supply in a freezer. When questioned, he explained that it kept his teeth clean and it was Nature's breath freshener. I had to agree as he did, indeed, have a dazzling-white smile and always smelled forest-fresh.

Luciano also introduced me to the mango. He brought one in for me one day when I expressed an interest in the fruit that he spoke of with an exaggerated fondness that made his eyes go soft. He showed me how to peel it with a paring knife, then cut away the flesh from the flat seed that he kept for himself, scraping it over and over between his teeth, because–as he put it–"It is the sweetest part…Nature's candy."

My first impression of the mango was favorable–a nice balance of sweet and tart, exotic aromas, buttery texture–yet there was an underlying flavor that intrigued me. When I identified it as pine and relayed this to Luciano, he burst out in a belly-laugh, explaining, "To me, everything tastes like pine"

It came as no surprise when, many years later, I confirmed that there is a concentration of the hydrocarbon, terpene, in the flavor profile of mangoes. Among these are limonene (citrus), pinene (pine), carvone (caraway, dill), myrcene (bay, verbena, myrtle), and ionone (violet, vetiver).

While playing with the flavor of pine (here, in the form of spruce) and mango, I found vanilla to be a nice bridge with both flavors, rounding out the sharp pitchyness of the pine and enhancing the floral aroma of mango. Pomelo, an enormous citrus that tastes like grapefruit without the bitterness, has a fragrant peel with tones of bergamot that played along well with these flavors.

Recently, in an email exchange with another chef, I mentioned this relationship between mango and pine. He was quick to reference a dish in The Big Fat Duck Cookbook. Sure enough, Heston Blumenthal had uncovered this relationship and composed a beautiful dessert around it.

king crab

mango

spruce

pomelo

avocado

vanilla

Although Luciano was in his fifties when I knew him, he was one of the fittest people I knew. He attributed this to a daily regimen of weight lifting and mango power shakes.

I think that he would approve of this mango lassi with a head of spruce foam, scented with a split vanilla bean.

Spruce (Picea) proliferates throughout Northern temperate zones. It is distinguished by its symmetrical conical growing habit, making it a prized landscape plant as well as a favorite Christmas tree. Spruce contains a good amount of vitamin C and its sap was used by Native Americans to make a gum, which later became the inspiration for the first commercially produced chewing gum.

Addendum: an interesting bit of information from a reader via email:

"…I lived on Kauai for four years where people with property have varied and excellent cultivars of all sorts of mango trees and one of my neighbors took me to his 'special' tree to harvest a basket load of perfectly luscious golden mangos. Then he showed me his personal quirk – mangos will bleed sap from the stem when they're picked and that was one of his favorite parts. I tried it and found it to be totally piney in flavor and from then on, I really taste the terpenes in the mango's I eat quite clearly. So fun. He believed it to be particularly healing too, though he didn't have any concrete thoughts about why specifically.
I recommend looking near the stem end of the mangos you find in the market for a shiney, dried drip of sap somewhere on the skin. You can usually peel it off and chew it like gum. It will be totally piney and delicious.
Thought you'd find this a fun bit to know…"

trout quinoa tangerine fir

fir-infused trout

crispy quinoa crust

fir oil

tangerine

black olive dust

If you've ever belonged to the Scouts of America, or have been camping, then you surely know what a hobo pack is. Maybe you don't. Or you need to be reminded.

A hobo pack is a self-contained meal where a square of foil serves as both pan and plate.

When my boys were young and had polar tastes in food, both of which conflicted with my husband's and mine–hobo packs saved my sanity. With very little effort, I could assemble fresh and nutritious meals that were customized to our individual tastes without destroying my kitchen. In the dog days of summer, vegetables and herbs went directly from the garden (with a brief pause under the faucet) to awaiting packs by the grill–no kitchen involved. In the winter, the packets were cooked on glowing embers in the fireplace and eaten on plates while sitting on the floor in front of the fire. These meals always felt effortless.

But if it was just convenience that I was after, there were other alternatives. What appealed to me about hobo packs was the cloche environment that allowed for infusing flavor. Here, there was plenty of room for play. Virtually any ingredient(s) that performs well in a steamy, hot environment is a candidate for this method, with herbs, spices, liquids and/or fats added for flavor.

What distinguishes this method from other forms of vapor cooking is that it is performed on a very hot heat source, which introduces the element of caramelization in the bottom layers that permeates the rest of the contents. One adjunct to this is that when using dried woody herbs as a bed, they will burn and impart a smoky flavor.

That smokiness was what I was going for when placing rainbow trout (a good choice for sustainability) on a bed of dried fraser fir needles. The result is a stunning sweet, resinous aroma that infiltrates the fish. If terroir, or 'a sense of place' can be captured in a dish, this one certainly does, conjuring up memories of sitting around a campfire in a fragrant forest, with a well-stocked lake nearby. In this context, food really does taste better when kissed by the great outdoors.

A thick layer of fresh fir needles are arranged on a square of heavy-duty foil. A deboned filet of trout is rubbed with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. Thin slices of tangerine are arranged over top. The foil is tightly sealed around fish, leaving some airspace for heat circulation. The packet is placed on a red-hot cast iron skillet (it's ready when drops of water immediately evaporate) and cooked for 3 minutes, then removed and allowed to steam for 5 minutes before opening.

Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) is the quintessential American Christmas tree, known for its fragrance and ability to retain its soft needles for weeks after cutting. It has one of the strongest terpene scents among conifers.

To make fir oil, blend fresh needles in a high speed blender with olive oil. Strain and store in an opaque container in the refrigerator.