Butter

“ Butter.—Of all articles of food butter has most fully received the attention of the sophisticator, because it is the most costly of the ordinary articles of diet, and because its composition is so intricate and variable that its analysis presents extraordinary difficulties and its nature exceptional and various opportunities for admixture with foreign substances. It is the intention of the producer of butter to separate the fatty portion of the milk as completely as is practicable from the other constituents of the milk without destroying the fat-globules. ”

“ Thy milk shall make us tubs of butter.
The bishop with his foot may burn it [8] ,
But with his hand the dean can churn it.
How are the servants overjoyed
To see thy deanship thus employ'd!
Instead of poring on a book,
Providing butter for the cook!
Three morning hours you toss and shake
The bottle till your fingers ake:
Hard is the toil, nor small the art,
The butter from the whey to part:
Behold a frothy substance rise;
Be cautious, or your bottle flies.
The butter comes, our fears are ceas'd ”

“ Further economy can be exercised in the use of butter if a little thought is given to the matter. For instance, when butter is melted and poured over meat or fish that has been broiled or over vegetables that have been cooked in a plain way, much of it usually remains in the dish and is wasted. Such butter can be utilized again. Since butter undergoes a change when it is cooked, it should be mixed with cooked foods to flavor them, rather than be subjected to the temperature necessary for cooking. ”

“ Never touch the butter with your hands.
Well-made butter is firm and not greasy. It possesses a characteristic texture or “grain,” in virtue of which it cuts clean with a knife and breaks with a granular fracture, like that of cast-iron. Theoretically, butter should consist of little else than fat, but in practice this degree of perfection is never attained. Usually the fat ranges from 83 to 88%, whilst water is present to the extent of from 10 to 15%. [11] There will also be from 0.2 to 0.8% of milk-sugar, and from 0.5 to 0.8% of casein. ”

“ To make it eat like fresh butter, dip each piece into water when it is cut out of the jar; or work it over again in fresh buttermilk or milk, and make it into shapes like fresh butter. It will eat much better with toast, than most of the fresh butter that is made in winter. It is a false idea, that butter, to be preserved for winter use, requires a greater quantity of salt: experience has proved the contrary. Butter salted in the common way, and put in pots with brine over the top, retains its flavour, and is better preserved than by an additional quantity of salt. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nice cool butter will then be had in the hottest weather. It requires more working in hot than in cold weather; but care should be taken at all times not to leave a particle of buttermilk, or a sour taste, as is too often done.—To preserve Butter, take two parts of the best common salt, one part of fine loaf-sugar, and one of saltpetre; beat them well together. To sixteen ounces of butter, thoroughly cleansed from the milk, add one ounce of this mixture: work it well, and pot down the butter when it becomes firm and cold. ”

“ Mode.—Cut the butter up into small pieces, put it in a saucepan, dredge over the flour, and add the water and a seasoning of salt; stir it one way constantly till the whole of the ingredients are melted and thoroughly blended. Let it just boil, when it is ready to serve. If the butter is to be melted with cream, use the same quantity as of water, but omit the flour ”

“ CLARIFIED BUTTER.— For this purpose use none but the very best fresh butter, such as is made in summer, when the cows are well pastured. Cut up the butter, put it into an enameled or porcelain stew-pan, and melt it gently over a clear and moderate fire. When it simmers, skim it thoroughly, draw it from the fire, and let it stand five minutes, that the milk or sediment may sink to the bottom. Then pour it clear from the sediment through a muslin strainer, or a fine clean hair sieve. ”

“ Flour, 2 lbs.; suet, 12 oz.; salt, 1 teaspoonful; water, 1 pint.
BUTTER CRUST FOR PUDDINGS. When suet is disliked for crust, butter must supply its place, but there must be no intermixture of lard in paste which is to be boiled. Eight ounces to the pound of flour will render it sufficiently rich for most eaters, and less will generally be preferred; rich crust of this kind being more indigestible by far than that which is baked. The butter may be lightly broken into the flour before the water is added, or it may be laid on, and rolled into the paste as for puff-crust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BAD BUTTER. OF all the needless discomforts common to boarding-houses and hotels, we know of none so truly inexcusable, nor which subtracts more from one’s enjoyment, than the use of bad butter for cooking purposes. When placed on the table in the butter-dish, if found to be imperfect or quite unpalatable the butter can easily be rejected. To eat good bread without butter, or, if the bread is unsatisfactory, a fine mealy potato with a little salt, is by no means the greatest hardship that you may be subjected to. ”

“ Like the best butter of France and England, it is sweet and pure, like solidified cream, and as different as can be from the hard, salty mass which most generally passes 237 for butter among us. The buttermilk of a daily churning is also sweet and rich, a delicious nourishing drink, and an excellent adjuvant in the making of various cakes and other household delicacies. ”

“ If the butter is not good enough to eat on the surface of cold bread or on warm cakes, it is not good enough to eat in the inside of sweet cakes, or in pastry, or in any thing else; and is totally unfit to be mixed with vegetables or sauces. The use of butter is to make things taste well; if it makes them taste ill, let it be entirely omitted: for bad butter is not only unpalatable, but unwholesome. There are houses in which the money wasted on one useless bauble for the drawing-room would furnish the family with excellent fresh butter for a whole year—enough for all purposes. ”

“ The butter is the constituent of milk which is most affected by the nature and amount of the animal's food; and butter is precisely the article which is of the greatest importance to the Irish dairy farmer, as the quantity of cheese prepared in this country is inconsiderable. ”

“ To make good butter we must cool our milk rapidly. The sooner we cool it down to 47 degrees after it leaves the cow the better the butter will be. The old-fashioned way of setting the milk in shallow pans or crocks in the milk cupboard, which in summer was placed in the cellar and in the pantry in winter, is still kept up by a good many farmers, and this no doubt accounts for the steady production [Pg 24] of ten-cent store butter with which our markets are always overstocked. ”

“ If very warm, wash a piece of ice and put it into the churn, leaving the butter five or ten minutes to harden before putting it into the “butter-bowl,” which, with the butter-ladle and churn, should have been kept full of cold water all night. When the butter is firm enough to work over, take it into the bowl and throw in a handful of salt; we fancy it causes the buttermilk to run off more easily; work out all the buttermilk as gently as possible; too much working or rough handling injures the grain of the butter. ”

“ Composition.—Butter is made by the churning or agitation of cream and is composed mainly of milk fats and water, together with smaller amounts of ash, salt, casein, milk sugar, and lactic acid. Average butter has the following composition:
When butter contains an abnormal amount of water, it is considered adulterated. ”

“ Butter is the clean, non-rancid product made by gathering in any manner the fat of fresh or ripened milk or cream into a mass, which also contains a small portion of the other milk constituents, with or without salt, and contains not less than eighty-two and five-tenths (82.5) percent of milk fat. By acts of Congress approved August 2, 1886, and May 9, 1902, butter may also contain added coloring matter. ”

“ To be able to select good butter, the housewife should also be familiar with its characteristics. In color, butter to be good should be an even yellow, neither too pale nor too bright, and should contain no streaks. The light streaks that are sometimes found in butter indicate insufficient working. As to odor, butter should be pleasing and appetizing, any foreign or strong, disagreeable odor being extremely objectionable. Stale butter or that which is improperly kept develops an acid called butyric acid, which gives a disagreeable odor and flavor to butter and often renders it unfit for use. ”

“ Butter is salted to improve the flavor, to serve the market purposes and to some degree to act as a preservative. In working the butter, the pile of granules is pressed flat with the lever, and the flattened mass of butter turned over about 12 or 14 times until the edges of butter, when broken, have a granular appearance similar to a broken half-baked potato. Too much working destroys the grain and the edges when broken apart will have a slightly stringy appearance, while too little working gives a streaked or mottled butter. ”

“ So far as its food substances are concerned, butter is composed largely of fat, but it also contains water, protein in the form of casein, and mineral matter. The quantity of water contained in butter determines to a large extent the weight of butter, since water is heavier than fat ”

“ Much butter is spoiled by keeping, because of neglecting the temperature, and setting the bottom of the package directly on the cellar bottom. If kept at a temperature above 60 degrees, butter will surely go off flavor, and wood will as surely draw moisture from the ground, if in contact with it, and become sour and musty, sooner or later affecting the flavor of the butter within the package. Nothing is to be lost, but all to be gained, by paying attention to these little things. ”

“ The common kinds of imitation butter, oleomargarine, butterine, etc., when properly made, agree very closely in chemical composition, digestibility, and nutritive value with butter from cow’s milk.
“2. In fulfilling one of the most important functions of food, namely, that of supplying the body with heat and muscular energy, they, with butter, excel in efficiency all, or nearly all, our other common food materials. ”

“ In some of the modern cookery books equal quantities of butter and flour, in addition to the yolks of two eggs, are recommended for rich puff paste; and it is directed that the greater part of the butter should be made into a ball, and the buttermilk having been squeezed out of it, it should be put into the crust and covered with it, like an apple in making an apple-dumpling. ”

“ Ours was fresh Victorian butter, packed in the ordinary export boxes, and carried to the Antarctic on the open bridge of the Aurora. With a sheath-knife, the sledging cook cut off three small chunks of two ounces each from the frozen butter every day at lunch. To show how the appetite is affected by extreme cold, one feels that butter is a wholesome thing just in itself, being more inclined to eat a pound than two ounces. ”

“ While the butter is being worked, it is salted. Some of the butter is unsalted, but most of it is salted. When butter is made in the home, it must be churned by hand. Only a few pounds at a time can be made in this way. ”

“ You can have a separate kettle to put a large lump of butter in for seasoning vegetables. If you print butter for home use, it is not necessary to weigh it, make it out in little lumps that will weigh about half a pound, scald the print and ladle, and put them in cold water, as you print each lump, lay it on a dish.
In winter it is more difficult to have good butter, as much depends on the food of the cows, the milk should be kept in a cellar, where it will not freeze, if you have a safe to keep it in, it need not be covered. ”

“ In the salting and packing of butter many abuses are practised, to increase its bulk and weight, against which there is an express act of parliament. Lumps of good butter are sometimes laid, for a little depth, at the top of a barrel, with butter of inferior quality beneath it. Sometimes the butter is packed hollow; and sometimes the exterior part of the butter is good whilst the whole interior is bad. ”

“ It possesses the property of absorption of odors in a curious degree; and if shut in a tight closet or a refrigerator with fish, meat, or vegetables of rank or even pronounced smell, exchanges its own delicate aroma for theirs, and reaches us bereft once for all of what is the real charm of perfect butter. For this reason absolute cleanliness and daintiness of vessels containing milk or cream, or used in any way in the manufacture of butter, is one of the first laws of the dairy. ”