With that in mind, we broke down some of the major butter brands and their respective salted and unsalted versions for a comparison. This allows you to see not just the salt variability across different butters but also will help us quantify the impact butter can have on flavor. Butter is typically portioned via a Tbsp or 14g of butter. Most butters contain about 11g of Fat per Tbsp, but some contain a bit more so that fat level has also been included to contrast with the sodium, which is displayed as mg/Tbsp. As expected, the unsalted versions of the butter are identical except for the sodium level, though they have been included in the table for completeness.

It seems that most brands hang around the 90mg mark for sodium, with the lowest being 75 and the highest being 100. The difference of 25mg might not seem like a lot but remember that is for a single tablespoon. If you used the entire stick of butter (8 Tbsp) this would result in a difference of 200mg of sodium, which if you recall from our salt post, could be almost a serving (1/4 tsp) of salt. Recipes rarely specify a brand of butter to use, so someone using a 75mg butter and someone using 100mg butter might view a recipe as either too bland or too salty as a result. So, it is important to at least know if your brand of salted butter is closer to the average (around 90mg) or on one of the extremes. This information can potentially explain mixed results in recipes you have tried.

While brands could lead to discrepancy in sodium level, it will be nothing compared to the difference in salted vs. unsalted butter. There is also no better recipe to exemplify this than the classic chocolate chip cookie. On the packaging of NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® chocolate chips it states simply “1 cup butter, softened.” 1 cup is the equivalent of 2 sticks / 16 Tbsp, and without the type of butter specified this could lead to some drastically different sodium levels. Given that most butters are around 90mg per Tbsp, this gives us 1,440mg of sodium from the butter alone. The recipe also calls for “1 tsp of salt”, which for the typical kosher that would be around 480mg of sodium per ¼ tsp, or 1,920mg for the entire batch. With Diamond Crystal, a lighter sodium salt, the entire batch would be only 1,120mg of sodium for the batch. The table below outlines 4 different salt/butter scenarios that one could have interpreted while making this batch of cookies.

Technically, all of these are acceptable cookie based on the instructions. This does not mean it’s a bad recipe, just that the exact result the recipe is trying to achieve is ambiguous. While it is crazy to see the maximum sodium could be nearly 4x greater than the minimum, the more significant difference is between the salted and unsalted butter given an average amount of salt. Using salted over unsalted butter with the same exact kosher salt could yield a cookie with 75% more sodium, or nearly double. As you might imagine, this could drastically impact your opinion of the cookie recipe.

Like any ingredient insight, the lesson here is knowledge. You do not even need to pick a constant butter type, just make sure you know which one you are using to adjust a recipe if needed. When writing, sharing, or using recipes, making sure that sodium level is explicit ensures the flavor of the food is explicit. Having many secret sources of sodium that are not explicitly stated can throw off results from the original author’s intention. This is not true of just butter (though it is one of the most pronounced when baking), many ingredients have added sodium to enhance their flavor. Keeping track of a recipes intended level of sodium and ideally controlling it from a single ingredient (added and exactly measured salt) is the best way to ensure your recipes turn out tasty and consistent every time you make them.

Final thoughts: We usually make toll house cookies with a total sodium level of 3,360mg. What salt/butter combo do you use? How much sodium do you like in your chocolate chip cookies?