I recently happened upon a mention of an old Irish custom of celebrating New Year’s Day as the Day of the Buttered Bread. What a marvelous idea, I thought. Good bread and good butter are two of the best things to eat in Ireland, no matter what the calendar date.

But I had never heard it mentioned there. An entire day of feasting on bread and butter seemed delightfully decadent, but it was difficult to find many details of the practice.

I contacted Darina Allen, proprietor of the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, who put me in touch with Regina Sexton, a food and culinary historian at University College Cork. My main question was whether or not this custom existed in modern Ireland.