Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries curious yellowish-white waxen lumps encased in the remnants of wooden containers have been unearthed from Irelands peat bogs by turf cutters and farmers. Some specimens weigh several kilos. Many are thought to date back thousands of years to the Bronze age, when the people of Ireland buried supplies of butter.

Maeve Sikora, Keeper of Irish Antiquities and Isabella Mulhall Assistant Keeper of Irish Antiquities from the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) in Dublin join me in this episode to tell us more about bog butter.

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Useful Links

National Museum of Ireland in Dublin

Butter Museum in Cork

‘A History of Bog Butter in Ireland’ by Maeve Sikora and Isabella Mulhall in Irish Food History: A Companion (2025)

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A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.

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