Buried in a peat bog for the best part of a thousand years, this in tact slab of butter is perhaps as surprising as the very idea that a museum of butter even exists. But it does, and perhaps there’s no better place for it than Cork, home to what was once the largest butter exchange market in the world.  

Bog butter has been found all over Ireland, buried in a time when food was stored in the ground in order to safeguard and preserve it. And it was kept cool down there, of course. But when people forgot it, it was left for us to discover, centuries later and house in places like The Butter Museum.

Image: with thanks to Culture magazine