One American woman living in Paris left a bad taste in the mouths of her European followers when she said it was “weird” how French people butter their sandwiches.
In a 5 August TikTok post, Amanda Rollins dished out the hot take while she prepared her and her boyfriend’s lunch for the following day. The lifestyle blogger took two half baguettes and cut them face open. As she began to prep the bread with pats of butter on her knife, she admitted that some one of her fellow American followers may find what she’s doing “strange.”
“It occurred to me that French people do something very weird with sandwiches that I think you guys would find strange. This is butter,” Rollins said. “What they do, it’s like a classic sandwich. It’s ham, cheese, and butter.”
She went on to explain how mustard and mayonnaise – two known sandwich spreads – are replaced with the salty dairy product that has a high concentration of fat. In her opinion, mayonnaise is “basically fat as well,” and the creamy sauce is more flavorful. Because of this, Rollins assumed people would think the butter replacement was “gross,” but she encouraged them to try it anyway.
“I know you might be thinking that sounds gross, but it’s actually so good. Is it healthy? No, of course not,” the TikTok user remarked. “What do you think of that? It’s kind of crazy.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it,” she continued.
European app users couldn’t believe how taken aback Rollins was by the act of spreading butter on a sandwich. As odd as Rollins made the food choice seem, they found it even more unusual that Americans don’t follow the same recipe
“Who doesn’t use butter in their sandwich?” a baffled individual wrote, while another added: “How is that crazy? It’s the most simple basic sandwich.”
One woman assumed: “Honestly, I think it’s only the US that don’t put butter on their sandwiches.”
“Butter before anything,” a TikToker from England exclaimed.
“Swede here, and totally normal in Scandinavia as well,” another user added.
One Canadian person claimed it was typical in their area as well. “Always butter in a sandwich. No mayo ever,” they commented.
Speaking with Insider, Rollins admitted she was not expecting so many people from outside the US to think using mayo in lieu of butter was irregular.
“A lot of people were saying mayonnaise on a sandwich is weird — to which I GASPED. In the US we are big condiment people,” she remarked.
Currently living in Paris, Rollins added how obviously barren the grocery store condiment sections were compared to the ones in America. She was confident that people in the US who put butter on their sandwich bread were in the “minority” because butter is more of a “toast lubricator.”
“We don’t view BUTTER as a CONDIMENT, it’s like a cooking ingredient and sometimes a toast lubricator. Like slabbing cold butter onto a sandwich would feel weird in the US, I know I am not making this up,” she told The Independent.
“People in the comments are GOING OFF on the fact that Americans are the only ones who don’t do this regularly. There’s someone from each country in Europe chiming in and saying ‘we do that in England, we do that in Germany, we do that in. Sweden, etc’ and I have comments like ‘this is the most normal thing in the world,’ ‘americans are the only ones who find this weird’ - to which I keep replying: ‘...and who do you think my audience is?’” she continued.
Rollins’ butter on sandwiches aversion extends to all recipes except the ham and cheese combo. Otherwise, the Paris resident prefers to stick with saucy condiments like she’s always done in the States.
