This butter wasn’t made from plants or animals—it was made with methane

After grabbing a handful of popcorn at an event held by California-based startup Savor, my fingers are left with a familiar sheen: the residue of the butter that coats the small kernels. When I later grab a blini (topped with lentils), the small pancake is so full of butter that it immediately coats my tongue in a velvety layer of fat. A mushroom “scallop,” grilled in butter, is rich and savory. 

The butter used in all these dishes is rich, creamy, indulgent. But it isn’t made from animals. It isn’t even made from plants, like avocado oil or coconut oil or olive oil. Instead, it’s made from energy—on this night specifically, methane. 

[Photo: courtesy Savor]

Savor, a 3-year-old startup backed by Bill Gates, makes fats and oils without agriculture. Usually, the most basic formula to create any sort of fat goes like this: Energy (predominantly from the sun, though you could also use something like indoor grow lights) grows plants, which can then be turned into oils themselves, or be fed to livestock, which then produce milk that’s turned into butter. 

Savor skips all those in-between steps. Instead, energy—methane, captured carbon dioxide, or even green hydrogen—is turned into butter through a thermochemical process that turns carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen into fatty acids. Those fatty acids can then be composed and rearranged to form triglycerides that make up different fats like butter, palm oil, cocoa butter, and more. It’s “Earth’s most ancient chemistry,” says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of Savor, explaining how billions of years ago, at the bottom of the ocean, hydrothermal vents created a chemical reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form fatty acids.

[Photo: courtesy Savor]

That means Savor’s butter eschews not only animals and plants but also the land associated with agriculture, hormones, antibiotics, and fertilizers—all of which have environmental impacts. All told, the current production of fats and oils makes up around 7% of global emissions, per a Savor calculation done in collaboration with environmental scientists. That’s more than double the global emissions of the aviation industry. 

Savor currently uses methane or carbon dioxide emitted from factories, and aims to work with companies focused on air capture, or extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere. For so long, cofounder Ian McKay says, we’ve exploited nature to make all of our food. “I think Savor is considering, are there cases where you can leave nature out and still get what you want?”

[Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor]

Throughout the meal at Savor’s event, the butter was featured in a variety of ways. Served in a ramekin alongside bread and crudités, it had a clean taste, with a slightly earthy, peppery finish, thanks to the addition of rosemary. By itself, the butter wasn’t the richest or saltiest—it was formulated to be more of a “pastry” butter, the team explained, to laminate well into doughs; it was still creamy, and held up well while sitting out at the table. It was thick and spreadable, not melting too quickly like oil-based butter alternatives, but easily saturating the bread. (Savor’s butter is also allergen-free.)

[Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor]

A lion’s mane mushroom steak cooked in the butter was meaty, juicy, and comforting, and the Savor butter even appeared in the cherry gastrique atop the mushroom, giving it a silky depth. The chocolate tart had a dense but flaky crust, with Savor butter salted caramel and a melt-in-your-mouth ganache. 

[Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor]

The meal was meant to show the variety of ways Savor’s butter can be used, fitting into chefs’ existing recipes and traditional cooking methods. It also marked Savor’s commercial launch. The startup’s first customers this year include Michelin-starred restaurants SingleThread and One65, and San Francisco’s Jane the Bakery. Savor has been working with chefs over the past year to test its butter and collaborate on creations. (The company is focused on launching as an ingredient supplier first, rather than direct to consumers on grocery store shelves.)

In a video on Savor’s website, pastry chef Juan Contreras of three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn, uses Savor butter to make a classic brioche, a recipe he says is “inherently all about the butter.” It’s also a recipe the San Francisco restaurant took off its menu when it stopped serving dairy. “It’s gotten to the point now where it’s pretty much just like working with dairy-based butter,” he says in the Savor video. “If I got served that at a restaurant . . . I would think it’s just regular butter.”

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