At room temperature, butter melts and becomes a liquid. But when refrigerated, it’s solid but not quite frozen. Why does this happen to butter and no other dairy products?
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At room temperature, butter softens but remains solid. It melts at 90F, which is above what most consider room temperature.
As to why, well, butter is mostly made of saturated fat. Saturated fats are solids at room temperature due to the way the molecules are structured – they can stack more densely, which makes it harder for them to spread out like liquids.
As to why other dairy products aren’t solid at room temperatures, it has to do with the type of emulsions they are. Milk and cream are fats dispersed in water, and water is liquid at room temperatures. Butter is the opposite – it’s water dispersed in saturated fat, which is solid.
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