01
Cream
10.01 cup : 1 1/2 cup
Whip cold cream to soft peaks for richness; use half the amount as butter, adds silky mouthfeel
10.0
butter substitutes
20 substitutes · avg score 7.0 · Butter — churned cream, roughly 80% milkfat with water and milk solids, used across cooking and baking. Adds fat, flavor, browning, and tenderness; essential in pastry, sauces, sautes, and finishing dishes.
the question is what state the butter was in
Butter is roughly 80% milkfat, with the rest water and milk solids, and that mix is why it can do jobs no pure fat can. But the useful question when you are standing over a bowl is narrower than chemistry: at the moment this butter meets the flour, is it cold and solid, soft and creamed, or already melted?
Cold and solid means lamination — pie crust, biscuits, scones, rough puff. The butter has to stay in distinct sheets long enough to hit oven heat, then melt and steam the layers apart. Soft and creamed means cake and cookie dough, where you are beating sugar crystals through plastic fat to shear in air pockets that the leavener later inflates. Melted means brownies, quick breads, most muffins, a pan sauce, a sauté — the fat's job there is coating, moisture, browning and flavour, and its physical structure has already been surrendered.
That single distinction sorts the whole list below. A substitute that is liquid at room temperature can stand in for melted butter and nothing else. A substitute that is solid but water-free changes how a pastry flakes. And a substitute that is mostly water changes the recipe's hydration before it changes anything else.
choosing
which swap survives which state
If the butter was going to be melted anyway, you have the widest field and the ratios matter more than the scores. Olive oil goes in at 3/4 cup per cup of butter, which is the standard correction for swapping a pure fat for one that is a fifth water — same instruction for avocado oil, and vegetable oil at 7/8 cup. Olive oil scores 4.0 here rather than higher for a flavour reason, not a mechanical one: its fruitiness is an asset in a savoury loaf or pizza dough and an intrusion in shortbread. Coconut oil scores 6.7 and is the odd one that is solid in a cool kitchen and liquid in a warm one, so measure it in the state your recipe wants.
If the butter was being cut in cold, you need a fat that is plastic at room temperature. Lard is the strongest option at 8.0, and the note explains both the appeal and the adjustment: it produces genuinely flakier pastry, and you use slightly less because lard has no water where butter carries 15-20%. Shortening at 6.7 gives the same forgiving flake, 1:1 by volume, and gives up all of butter's dairy flavour and browning to get it. This is exactly why the classic half-butter, half-shortening crust exists.
If the butter was being creamed, the field narrows hard. Margarine at 4.0 is the honest 1:1 — it is engineered to butter's water content, and the trade is softer cookies with less crisp at the edge. Ghee scores a full 10.0 and swaps 1:1, but the clarified-butter entry carries the caution that matters in baking: use 25% less, since there is no water in it. Butter oil says the same thing from the other side — 20% less, plus a splash of water to put the missing moisture back.
And two entries are not fat replacements at all. Cream and heavy cream both rank high because whipped to soft peaks they deliver richness and mouthfeel, but the note is explicit that cream adds no structure — fine for folding into a batter or frosting something you will eat today, wrong for anything that must hold its shape on a warm counter. Applesauce at 1/2 cup per cup of butter is a fat reduction, not a substitution: expect a moister, paler, cakier result, because you have removed the browning along with the fat.
convert butter measurements
quick swaps (averaged across uses)
02
Half and Half
10.01 cup : 7/8 cup
Much thinner; use in sauces and soups where butter's richness is needed but solid fat is not
10.0
03
Salted Butter
10.01 tbsp : 1 tbsp
Add pinch of salt per stick
10.0
04
Stick Butter
10.01 tbsp : 1 tbsp
Identical product in stick form; no conversion needed, just unwrap and measure as usual
10.0
05
Whipped Butter
10.03 tbsp : 2 tbsp
Whipped has air, use less regular butter
10.0
06
Ghee
10.01 tbsp : 1 tbsp
Nutty toasted flavor with higher smoke point; 1:1 swap, dairy-free of casein for lactose-sensitive cooks
10.0