Scald your milk pans every day after washing them; and let them set
till the water gets cold. Then wipe them with a clean cloth. Fill them
all with cold water half an hour before milking time, and do not pour
it out till the moment before you are ready to use the pans. Unless all
the utensils are kept perfectly sweet and nice, the cream and butter
will never be good. Empty milk-pans should stand all day in the sun.
When you have strained the milk into the pans, (which should be broad
and shallow,) place them in the spring-house, setting them down in
the water. After the milk has stood twenty-four hours, skim off the
cream, and deposite it in a large deep earthen jar, commonly called a
crock, which must be kept closely covered, and stirred up with a stick
at least twice a day, and whenever you add fresh cream to it. This
stirring is to prevent the butter from being injured by the skin that
will gather over the top of the cream.
You should churn at least twice a week, for if the cream is allowed to
stand too long, the butter will inevitably have a bad taste. Add to the
cream the strippings of the milk.
Butter of only two or three days gathering is the best. With four or
five good cows, you may easily manage to have a churning every three
days. If your dairy is on a large scale, churn every two days.
Have your churn very clean, and rinse and cool it with cold water. A
barrel churn is best; though a small upright one, worked by a staff or
dash, will do very well where there are but one or two cows.
Strain the cream from the crock into the churn, and put on the lid.
Move the handle slowly in warm weather, as churning too fast will make
the butter soft. When you find that the handle moves heavily and with
great difficulty, the butter has come; that is, it has separated from
the thin fluid and gathered into a lump, and it then is not necessary
to churn any longer. Take it out with a wooden ladle, and put it into
a small tub or pail. Squeeze and press it hard with the ladle, to get
out all that remains of the milk. Add a little salt, and then squeeze
and work it for a long time. If any of the milk is allowed to remain
in, it will speedily turn sour and spoil the butter. Set it away in a
cool place for three hours, and then work it over again.[L] Wash it in
cold water; weigh it; make it up into separate pounds, smoothing and
shaping it; and clap each pound on your wooden butter print, dipping
the print every time in cold water. Spread a clean linen cloth on a
bench in the spring-house; place the butter on it, and let it set till
it becomes perfectly hard. Then wrap each pound in a separate piece of
linen that has been dipped in cold water.
Pour the buttermilk into a clean crock, and place it in the
spring-house, with a saucer to dip it out with. Keep the pot covered.
The buttermilk will be excellent the first day; but afterwards it will
become too thick and sour. Winter buttermilk is never very palatable.
Before you put away the churn, wash and scald it well; and the day that
you use it again, keep it for an hour or more filled with cold water.
In cold weather, churning is a much more tedious process than in
summer, as the butter will be longer coming. It is best then to have
the churn in a warm room, or near the fire.
If you wish to prepare the butter for keeping a long time, take it
after it has been thoroughly well made, and pack it down tightly into a
large jar. You need not in working it, add more salt than if the butter
was to be eaten immediately. But preserve it by making a brine of fine
salt, dissolved in water. The brine must be strong enough to bear up
an egg on the surface without sinking. Strain the brine into the jar,
so as to be about two inches above the butter. Keep the jar closely
covered, and set it in a cool place.
When you want any of the butter for use, take it off evenly from the
top; so that the brine may continue to cover it at a regular depth.
This receipt for making butter is according to the method in use
at the best farm-houses in Pennsylvania, and if exactly followed
will be found very good. The badness of butter is generally owing to
carelessness or mismanagement; to keeping the cream too long without
churning; to want of cleanliness in the utensils; to not taking the
trouble to work it sufficiently; or to the practice of salting it so
profusely as to render it unpleasant to the taste, and unfit for cakes
or pastry. All these causes of bad butter are inexcusable, and can
easily be avoided. Unless the cows have been allowed to feed where
there are bitter weeds or garlic, the milk cannot naturally have any
disagreeable taste, and therefore the fault of the butter must be the
fault of the maker. Of course, the cream is much richer where the
pasture is fine and luxuriant; and in winter, when the cows have only
dry food, the butter must be consequently whiter and more insipid than
in the grazing season. Still, if properly made, even winter butter
cannot taste badly.
Many economical housekeepers always buy for cooking, butter of inferior
quality. This is a foolish practice; as when it is bad, the taste will
predominate through all attempts to disguise it, and render every thing
unpalatable with which it is combined. As the use of butter is designed
to improve and not to spoil the flavour of cookery, it is better to
omit it altogether, and to substitute something else, unless you can
procure that which is good. Lard, suet, beef-drippings, and sweet oil,
may be used in the preparation of various dishes; and to eat with bread
or warm cakes, honey, molasses, or stewed fruit, &c. are far superior
to bad butter.