BUTTER.

Raising the cream, churning, working, and preserving, are the points in

successful butter-making. To raise cream, milk may be set in tin, wood,

or cast-iron dishes. The best are iron, tinned over on the inside. Tin

is better than wood, only on account of its being more easily kept

clean. No one can ever make good butter without keeping everything about

the dairy perfectly clean and sweet. Milk should never stand more than

three inches deep in the pans, to raise the best and most cream. It

should be set in an airy room, containing nothing else. Butter and milk

will collect and retain the flavor of any other substance near them,

more readily than anything else; hence, milk set in a cellar containing

onions, or in a room with new cheese, makes butter highly flavored with

those articles.

_Temperature_ is an important matter. It should be regular, at from

fifty to fifty-five degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. It is sometimes

difficult to be exact in this matter, but come as near it as possible.

This can be well regulated in a good cool cellar, into which air can be

plentifully admitted at pleasure. Those who are so situated that their

milk-house can stand over a spring, with pure water running over its

stone floor, are favored. Those who will take pains to lay ice in their

milk-rooms, in very warm weather, will find it pay largely in the

quality and quantity of their butter. Those who will not follow either

of the above directions, must be content to make less butter, and of

rather inferior quality, out of the same quantity of milk.

_Skimming_ should be attended to when the milk has soured just enough to

have a little of it curdle on the bottom of the pan. If it should nearly

all curdle, it would not be a serious injury, unless it should become

old. If you have not conveniences for keeping milk sufficiently warm in

cold weather, place it over the stove at once, when drawn, and give it a

scalding heat, and the cream will rise in a much shorter space of time,

and more plentifully. Milk should be strained and set as soon as

possible after being drawn from the cow, and with the least possible

agitation. The unpleasant flavor imparted to milk from the food of the

cows, such as turnips or leeks, may be at once removed by adding to the

milk, before straining, one eighth of its quantity of boiling water; or

two ounces of nitre boiled in one quart of water and bottled, and a

small teacupful put in twelve quarts of milk, will answer the same

purpose.

_Milking_ should be performed with great care. Experiments have

demonstrated that the last drawn from a cow yields from six to sixteen

times as large a quantity of better cream than that first drawn.

Careless milking will make the quantity of butter less, and the quality

inferior, while it dries up the cows. There are probably millions of

cows now in the United States that are indifferent milkers from this

very cause. Quick and clean milking, from the time they first came in,

would have made them worth twice as much, for butter and milk, as they

are now. Always milk as quickly as possible, and without stopping, after

you commence, and as nearly as possible at the same hour of the day.

Leaving a teacupful, or even half that quantity, in milking each cow,

will very materially lessen the products of the dairy, and seriously

injure the cows for future use. Great milkers will yield considerable

more by having it drawn three times per day. The quantity of milk given

by a cow will never injure her, provided she be well fed. As it takes

food to make meat, so it does also to make milk; you can never get

something for nothing. The best breeds of swine, cattle, or fowls, can

not be fattened without being well fed: so the best cows will never give

large messes of milk unless they are largely fed.

_Churning._--This is entirely a mechanical process. The agitation of the

cream dashes the oily globules in the cream against each other, and they

remain together and grow larger, until the butter is, what the dairy

woman calls, gathered. The butter in the milk, when drawn from the cow,

is the same as when on the table, only it is in the milk in the form of

very small globes: churning brings them together. The object then to be

secured, by any form of a churn, is agitation, or dashing and beating

together.

_Temperature of the Cream_ should be from sixty to sixty-five

degrees--perhaps sixty-two is best. This had better always be determined

by a thermometer immersed in it.

Many churns have been invented and patented; and every new one is, of

course, the best. A cylinder is usually preferred as the best form for a

churn, and the churning is performed by turning a crank. An oblong

square box is far better than a cylinder. In churning in a cylinder, it

may often occur that the cream moves round in a body with the dasher,

and so is but slightly agitated. But change that cylinder into an oblong

square, and the cream is so dashed against the corners of the box that a

most rapid agitation is the result, and the churning is finished in a

short space of time.

Any person of a little mechanical genius can construct a churn, equal to

any in use, and at a trifling expense. It is well to make a churn

double, leaving an inch between the two, into which cold or warm water

can be poured, to regulate the temperature of the cream. This would be a

great saving of time and patience in churning. Those who use the

old-fashioned churns with dashes can most conveniently warm or cool

their cream, by placing the churn containing it in a tub of cold or

boiling water, as the case may require, until it comes to the

temperature of sixty or seventy degrees.

To make butter of extra quality for the fair, or for a luxury on your

own table, set only one third of the milk, and that the last drawn from

the cow. The Scotch, so celebrated for making butter of more marrowy

richness than any other, first let the calves draw half or two thirds of

the milk, and then take the remainder. This makes the finest butter in

the world.

_Preserving Butter_ depends upon the treatment immediately after

churning. Success depends upon getting the buttermilk all out, and

putting in all the salt you put in at all, immediately--say within ten

minutes after churning. Some accomplish this by washing, and others by

working it, being much opposed to putting in a drop of water. Those who

use water in their butter, and those who do not, are equally confident

of the superiority of their own method. But all good butter-makers

agree, that the less you work butter, and still remove all the milk, the

better it will be; and the more you are obliged to work it, the more

gluey, and therefore the poorer the quality. Very good butter is made by

immediately working all the milk out and salting thoroughly--working the

salt into every part, without the use of water.

_Working over_ butter, the next day after churning, should be nothing

more than nicely forming it into rolls, without any further working or

any more salt. An error, that spoils more butter than any other, is that

of doing very little with butter when it first comes out of the churn,

because it must be gone through with the next day. Many do not know why

their butter has different colors in the same mass--some white, and some

quite yellow, and all shades between. The reason always is, putting in

the salt immediately on churning, but neglecting to incorporate that

salt into every part of the mass equally: thus, where there is most salt

there will be one color, and where less, another. Another evil is, when

the salt is thus put in carelessly, while much buttermilk remains, that

salt dissolves; and when the butter is worked over the next day, the

salt is mostly worked out, with the milk or water left in, the previous

day. The addition of more salt then will not save it. It has received an

injury, by retaining the milk or water for twenty-four hours, from which

no future treatment will enable it to recover. We recommend washing as

preferable; it has the following advantages: it cools butter quickly in

warm weather, bringing it at once into a situation to be properly worked

and salted. The buttermilk is also removed more speedily than in any

other way; this is a great object. It removes the milk with less

working, and consequently with less injury, than the other method. These

three advantages, cooling in hot weather, expelling the milk in the

shortest time, and working the butter the least, lead us to prefer using

water, by one hundred per cent. We have for years used butter that has

been made in this way, and never tasted better. Butter made in this way

in summer will keep well till next summer, to our certain knowledge.

Immediately after churning, pour off all the milk and put in half a

pailful of water, more or less according to quantity; agitate the whole

with the dasher, and pour off the water. Repeat this once or twice until

the water runs off clear, without any coloring from the milk, and nearly

all the buttermilk is out; this can all be done in five minutes after

churning. Press out the very little water that will remain, and put in

all the salt the butter will require, and work it thoroughly into every

part. All this need occupy no more than ten minutes, and the butter is

set away for putting up in rolls, or packing down in jars the next day.

Such butter would keep tied up in a bag, and hung in a good airy place.

Best to put it down in a jar, packed close; put a cloth over top, and

cover with half an inch of fine salt. The only difficulty in keeping

butter grows out of failure to get out all the milk, and thoroughly salt

every particle, within fifteen minutes after churning. Speedy removal of

buttermilk and water, and speedy salting, will make any butter keep.

This subject is so important, as good butter is such a luxury on every

table, that we recapitulate the essentials of good butter making:--