Its official: Butter is back! It has been acquitted of the many crimes of which it was accused since the 1970s. Butter is no longer bad. Butter is in fact beautiful.

The announcement was made in an article in the New York Times on March 25, which was in turn based on a report published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine on March 17. The report analysed the findings of 72 studies and concluded that there is no evidence to link the consumption of saturated fat with increased risk of heart disease.

Medical and dietary professionals have raised their butter knives in protest. They argue that writer Mark Bittman misinterpreted the findings of the report and that he is unqualified to comment on health issues. They insist on maintaining the status quo which shuns a natural and unprocessed food like real butter and endorses industrially-produced margarine that is rumoured to be just one molecule away from being plastic.

While the debate among experts sizzles, there is no denying that, for the ordinary consumer, nothing beats biting into a piece of warm toast smothered with butter. Butter is what makes good popcorn truly great. Bake with it, cook with it, even use it for grilling; no food satiates quite like butter.

For thousands of years clarified butter or ghee has been considered a symbol of purity in India where it a staple food and even used in religious ceremonies. Ancient Greeks, however, used butter only for medicinal purposes. They, and those who followed, looked down upon it as unrefined peasant food; which is perhaps why it took a long time for butter to accompany bread on the middle-class European table. But once butter started to churn there was no stopping it because after the 12th century the manufacture and export of butter began to be seen as a lucrative trade in northern Europe.

Love for butter spread far and wide. On the Orkney Islands off the coast of northern Scotland, there lies a rock named the Barrel of Butter. It got its name not due to its shape, but because that was precisely the annual payment locals made to the laird for the right to hunt seals on it. In 2009 in nearby Ireland, workers in a peat bog discovered an oak barrel full of well-preserved butter dating back to the Middle Ages. In the days before refrigerators, people depended on cold and antiseptic peat to keep their butter safe from heat and mould. Sometimes they simply forgot to reclaim it, with the result that butter is one of the most widespread archaeological items found in Ireland and Scotland.

But like wine and cheese, it was in France that humble butter acquired a certain la qualité de l’étoile. The golden coloured butter produced in the regions of Normandy and Brittany became well known. Ironically it was also in France that butter first acquired its loathsome substitute. In 1869, when the supply of butter in France was running short due to increasing demand, a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès created a mixture of beef fat and milk that could be used in its place. He called this imitation butter spread ‘margarine’. Modern margarines made with vegetable oil and water came later during the 1900s.

Real butter is the key ingredient in French sauces, the hallmark of French cuisine. Nothing signifies classic French like yellow Hollandaise sauce made with egg yolks and melted butter. Drizzled generously on steamed asparagus or poured in abundance on Eggs Benedict (poached eggs atop smoked salmon on a toasted English muffin). Unless it’s creamy béchamel sauce — also known as white sauce — concocted from butter, flour and milk. Layered with thinly sliced potatoes to make Gratin Dauphinois, dribbled on a piping hot Croque Monsieur or folded with chopped mushrooms and chicken to create Bouchée à la Reine. It is no surprise that France ranks number three in terms of national butter consumption, after India and Germany respectively.

“With enough butter, anything is good,” said Julia Child, the original Domestic Goddess and author of the landmark cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). Mrs Child worked tirelessly to adapt classic French cuisine for Americans and she made it very clear that she loathed so-called health food. She did not believe in skimping on fat either, insisting until her death at age 91 that it is fat which gives flavour to food.

It appears that her advice did not fall on deaf ears. According to 2014 statistics the butter market now tops $2 billion a year in the United States. This dollar figure has increased by at least 65 per cent since 2000. The American Butter Institute also noticed a 40-year high in 2012 when butter’s per capita consumption stood at 5.6 pounds.

Like it or love it, butter is making a comeback.