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 deposits 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 odd
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. [Footnote: A marble slab
or table will be found of great advantage in working and making up
butter.] 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.