LETTER TO A DAIRY-WOMAN.
In the earlier chapters of this work I have spoken to farmers and
dairymen of the selection, care, and management, of dairy stock. The
seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters relate more especially to your
department, and on your application and skill will depend chiefly the
successful result of the dairy establishment. Of what avail are costly
barns, well-selected cows, and judicious feeding, in the butter and
cheese dairy, if the products are to be depreciated in value by the
imperfect modes of preparing them for the market, where the final
judgment is passed upon them, and where it is expected the price will be
according to their value?
You have, doubtless, had a much greater practical knowledge and
experience of the details of dairy management than I have. For this
practice and experience I have the utmost respect; but I have not spoken
without a knowledge of the subject. I have made many a cheese, and many
a pound of butter, while my observations have extended over all the most
important dairy districts of the country, and have not been limited to
the practices of any one section, which, however good in themselves, may
not be the best. I trust, therefore, you will excuse me for calling your
attention to the more important points to which I have alluded; and, if
my conclusions happen to differ from your own, in any respect, that you
will not discard them as worthless, without first bringing them to the
test of careful experiment, when I trust they will be found correct.
I have not written to establish any favorite theory, but simply to
inculcate truth, and to aid in developing a most important branch of
American industry, which, either directly or indirectly, involves the
investment of a vast amount of capital, the aggregate profits of which
depend so largely on your judgment and skill.
I need not remind you that any addition, however small, to the market
value of each pound of butter or cheese, will largely increase the
annual income of your establishment. Nor need I remind you that these
articles are generally the last of either the luxuries or the
necessaries of life in which city customers are willing to economize.
They must and will have a good article, and are ready to pay for it in
proportion to its goodness; or, if they desire to economize in butter,
it will be in the quantity rather than the quality.
Poor butter is a drug in the market. Nobody wants it, and the dealer
often finds it difficult to get it off his hands, when a delicate and
finely-flavored article attracts attention and secures a ready sale.
Some say that poor butter will do for cooking. But a good steak or
mutton-chop is too expensive to allow any one to spoil it by the use of
a poor quality of butter; and good pastry-cooks will tell you that cakes
and pies cannot be made without good sweet butter, and plenty of it.
These dishes relish too well, when properly cooked with nice butter, for
any one to tolerate the use of poor butter in them.
On page 220 and elsewhere, I have dwelt on the necessity of extreme
cleanliness in all the operations of the dairy; and this is the basis
and fundamental principle of your business. I would not suppose, for a
moment, that you are lacking in this respect. The enormous quantities
of disgusting, streaky, and tallow-like butter that are daily thrust
upon the seaboard markets must be due to the carelessness and negligence
of heedless men, to exposure to sun and rain, to bad packing, and to
delays in transportation. Many of these evils you may not be able to
remove, since you cannot follow the article to the market, and see that
it arrives safely and untainted. But you can take greater pains,
perhaps, in some of the preliminary processes of making, and produce an
article that will not be so liable to injure from keeping and
transportation; and then, if fault is to be found, it does not rest with
you.
I will not suggest the possibility that your ideas of cleanliness and
neatness may be at fault; and that what may seem an excess of nicety and
scrubbing to you may appear to be almost slovenliness to some others,
whose butter receives the highest price in the market, and always finds
the readiest sale. Permit me, however, to refer you to pages 300, 324,
and 325, where a detailed account is given of the washings in water and
washings in alkali; of the scrubbings, and the scourings, and the
scaldings, and the rinsings, which the neat and tidy Dutch dairy-women
give all the utensils of the dairy, from the pails to the firkins and
the casks, and also to their extreme carefulness that no infectious odor
rises from the surroundings. I think you will see that it is a physical
impossibility that any taint can affect the atmosphere or the utensils
of such a dairy, and that many of the details of their practice may be
worthy of imitation in our American dairies.
And here allow me to suggest that, though we may not approve of the
general management in any particular section, or any particular dairy,
it is rare that there is not something in the practice of that section
that is really valuable and worthy of imitation.
On pages 231 and 234 I have called your attention to the use of the
sponge and clean cloth for absorbing and removing the butter-milk in the
most thorough manner; this I regard as of great importance.
I have stated on page 234 that, under ordinarily favorable
circumstances, from twelve to eighteen hours will be sufficient to raise
the cream; and that I do not believe it should stand over twenty-four
hours under any circumstances. This, I am aware, is very different from
the general practice over the country. But, if you will make the
experiment in the most careful manner, setting the pans in a good, airy
place, and not upon the cellar bottom, I think you will soon agree with
me that all you get, after twelve or eighteen hours, under the best
circumstances, or at most after twenty-four hours, will detract from the
quality and injure the fine and delicate aroma and agreeable taste of
the butter to a greater extent than you are aware of. The cream which
rises from milk set on the cellar bottom acquires an acrid taste, and
can neither produce butter of so fine a quality or so agreeable to the
palate as that which rises from milk set on shelves from six to eight
feet high, around which there is a full and free circulation of pure
air. The latter is sweeter, and appears in much larger quantities in the
same time than the former.
If, therefore, you devote your attention to the making of butter to sell
fresh in the market, and desire to obtain a reputation which shall aid
and secure the quickest sale and the highest price, you will use cream
that rises first, and that does not stand too long on the milk. You will
churn it properly and patiently, and not with too great haste. You will
work it so thoroughly and completely with the butter-worker, and the
sponge and cloth, as to remove every particle of butter-milk, never
allowing your own or any other hands to touch it. You will keep it at a
proper temperature when making, and after it is made, by the judicious
use of ice, and avoid exposing it to the bad odors of a musty cellar.
You will discard the use of artificial coloring or flavoring matter, and
take the utmost care in every process of making. You will stamp your
butter tastefully with some mould which can be recognized in the market
as yours; as, for instance, your initials, or some form or figure which
will most please the eye and the taste of the customer. You will send it
in boxes so perfectly prepared and cleansed as to impart no taste of
wood to the butter. If all these things receive due attention, my word
for it, the initials or form which you adopt will be inquired after, and
you will always find a ready and a willing purchaser at the highest
market price.
But, if you are differently situated, and it becomes necessary to pack
and sell as firkin-butter, let me suggest the necessity of an equal
degree of nicety and care in preparation, and that you insist, as one of
your rights, that the article be packed in the best of oak-wood firkins,
thoroughly prepared after the manner of the Dutch, as stated on page
325. A greater attention to these points would make the butter thus
packed worth several cents a pound more when it arrives in the market
than it ordinarily is. Indeed, the manner in which it not infrequently
comes to market is a disgrace to those who packed it; and it cannot be
that such specimens were ever put up by the hands of a dairy-woman. I
have often seen what was bought for butter open so marbled, streaked,
and rancid, that it was scarcely fit to use on the wheels of a carriage.
If you adopt the course which I have recommended in regard to skimming,
you will have a large quantity of sweet skimmed milk, far better than it
would be if allowed to stand thirty-six or forty-eight hours, as is the
custom with many. This is too valuable to waste, and it is my opinion
that you can use it to far greater profit than to allow it to be fed to
swine. There can be no question, I think, that cheese-making should be
carried on at the same time with the making of butter, in small and
medium-sized dairies. You have seen, in Chapter XI., that some of the
best cheese of Holland is made of sweet skim-milk. The reputation of
Parmesan--a skim-milk cheese of Italy, page 266--is world-wide, and it
commands a high price and ready sale. The mode of making these varieties
has been described in detail in the ninth and eleventh chapters; and you
can imitate them, or, perhaps, improve upon them, and thus turn the
skim-milk to a very profitable account, if it is sweet and good. You
will find, if you adopt this system, that your butter will be improved,
and that, without any great amount of extra labor, you will make a large
quantity of very good cheese, and thus add largely to the profit of your
establishment, and to the comfort and prosperity of your family.
But, if you devote all your attention to the making of cheese, whether
it is to be sold green, or as soon as ripe, or packed for exportation, I
need not say that the same neatness is required as in the making of
butter. You will find many suggestions in the preceding pages on the
mode of preparation and packing, which I trust will prove to be valuable
and applicable to your circumstances. There is a general complaint among
the dealers in cheese that it is difficult to get a superior article.
This state of things ought not to exist. I hope the time is not far
distant when a more general attention will be paid to the details of
manufacture, and let me remind you that those who take the first steps
in improvement will reap the greatest advantages.