The Black Butter Club

You are Cordially Invited to Join.

Sam Cooper

May 27, 2025

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Seasonal Writings on Flavour, Fermentation & Other Curious Pursuits.

I thought it fun to have an actual letter within a newsletter

Welcome to The Black Butter Club.

Named for an old-world preserve made of sour apples, spices, and patience, this rebrand of my newsletter is a love letter to the art of transformation: of ingredients, of growth, of time, of ourselves.

This is our very own secret society of the senses. Of slow delights, satiation, old techniques, and new ideas. It’s a homecooked recipe, from years spent in professional kitchens, that doesn’t neglect to mention the fragrance of sweet peas outside the open window. It’s an opportunity to explore flavour and food from perspectives we are often deprived of, with voices from around the world contributing in their own techniques, flavours, and stories.

Each edition is an almanac page from a parallel timeline, where the seasons are tasted, not just watched, and knowledge is preserved like fruit in a jar: sour, sweet, unexpected.

Here’s what you can expect:

🍋 Flavour, explained. The science, magic, and folklore behind what we taste. How flavour has shaped us individually, historically, and culturally.

🫙 Fermentation tales. From ancient crocks to modern gut microbiomes, join me in my exploration of all things microcosmos.

🍋 Seasonal recipes. Real food that honours the garden, the hedgerow, and your gut (often, if not always, involving the fermented foods you’ve learned to make right here in the club).

📚 Curious pursuits. History, philosophy, storytelling, slow living, soil, and culture, with guest appearances from other unique and interesting writers.

🧪 Experiments. Miso from forgotten beans. Vinegars of wild fruit. Strange brews that whisper back.

🌾 Seasonal almanac. When to sow and how to sow it, updates from the farm, and useful tips to grow the best flavours you can, whatever the size or shape of your home.

📷 Photos. The same standard of rich photographic imagery you’ve come to expect from this newsletter.

The tone? Imagine a dinner party with good company in a crumbling greenhouse filled with pickles, journals, and botanical curios. Where the conversation is as interesting as the food. Perhaps a bit grandiose, but why not set our sights high?

One of the issues I ran into in the previous iteration of this newsletter was becoming too hemmed in by the need to provide fermentation techniques every week. Anyone with experience in fermentation will know: you quickly run out of jars.

Whilst I still very much plan to share plenty on fermentation, both making ferments and incorporating them into meals with delicious recipes, I’ve decided to listen to the feedback you’ve given me and lean into writing more as well.

Many of you have shared kind words about my writing on stories from the farm, the kitchen, and life in general, memories that underpin the flavours I share. Growing food is also a big part of my life, as are the communities of extraordinary people I’d love to promote and share this space with.

You don’t need a password, just a willingness to marvel.

Membership is open to the brave, the hungry, the seasonally inclined. If you’re ready to preserve and observe, to think a little deeper about what’s on your plate and why it matters, then you’re already one of us.

in case you’re reading this in email or on the app, here is a preview of the webpage post-facelift

But why the name?

I’ve cooked in many kitchens: from cafés to restaurants, a bakery, and a hotel. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside some fantastic chefs and been inspired by their discipline, knowledge, and creativity. I fell in love with the idea of being a chef, with the simplicity of it, and the respect it came with.

But there was one person I worked with who refused the title.

Abbey (who isn’t called Abbey, but shall remain anonymous) was in her sixties, ran a smallholding with an iron fist, was an ex–school dinner lady, a member of the W.I. (Women’s Institute), and a force to be reckoned with. When a kitchen I worked in suddenly had a vacancy, the restaurant owners brought Abbey in to take over. Nobody - and I mean nobody - has ever used the pet name sunshine with such menace.

Whilst not quick with a knife, nor as enduring as some of the team, Abbey believed in feeding people above all else. A big portion of tasty, well-made food. No ego, no showing off, no statement to be made, politics, or performance. Just hard graft, good food, and a host of British puddings, pies, and cakes. The only time I ever saw her take a seat and stop working was when we persuaded her to try a very weak latte (half a shot of coffee in a large latte glass), and she needed to sit down to recover from the caffeine.

It was she who showed me that there is a quiet and necessary service to being a cook, not just a chef. To honouring old recipes as well as the creative ones. In knowing the difference between a Victoria sponge and a Victoria sandwich (heaven help you if you got that wrong in front of her). And in the slow and steady art of preserving gluts of fruit for jam, chutneys, and black butter.

Black butter is an apple preserve, made with cider, vinegar, and spices. It is a sweet-and-sour treat from the culinary landscape of Jane Austen and the household manuals of the Regency and Georgian eras. Made largely in the West Country, Ireland, and the Channel Islands, it is a communal effort, with cooks taking shifts to stir the giant pot as it slowly cooks over 24 hours.

Like the perfect stock, or a slow Sunday roast, black butter is a subtle art, and something I’ve made almost every year since working in that kitchen, using a mixture of windfall and bruised apples not fit for cider-making from the orchards. It’s a tradition that ties me to the revelation that feeding people is the most important thing to me. And the smell of molten, black, spiced apples bubbling away will forever send me crashing back through memories of a time my perspective on food shifted forever.

In honour of this, and how the word black (or du, Welsh for black) crops up all over Wales, the land I call home, I’ve decided to carry it over from my social media name, Chef Sam Black, to symbolise this shift in thinking and give the rebrand of this newsletter a meaning outside of just naming it after myself.

And why a club?

Because this isn’t my newsletter, it’s ours. And I wanted to put that at the forefront.