Butterfat

“ In chemical composition butter-fat is very nearly the same as other 14animal and vegetable fats, but the slight variation may make a lot of difference in digestibility and palatability as well as in nutritive value, and it is a mistake to consider Oleomargarine, Butterine, Nut-Butter and other substitutes for butter “just as good” because a chemical analysis shows them to contain “almost” the same elements or compounds. These products may be good and legitimate if sold for what they are, but should never be allowed to be sold or served for what they are not, genuine butter. ”

“ Owing to this subdivision of the fat, and perhaps to the composition of the fat itself, butter is a more digestible fatty article of food than lard or oil. It is not possible by mechanical means to remove the whole of the water and curd of the milk from the butter; indeed “overworking” the butter with the object of removing the water as completely as possible ruins the structure to such an extent as to make the product unmerchantable. ”

“ For the sustenance of the body we must recognize that fat is fat, whatever its flavor. A calorie from butter yields neither more nor less energy than a calorie from lard or bacon, olive oil or cottonseed oil. The common food fats are all very well digested if judiciously used—not in too large quantities, nor over-heated in cooking, and not “cooked into” things too much as in pastries, rich sauces, and fried foods. Whether we spread our bread with butter or beef drippings amounts to the same thing in the long run; the main point is which we are willing to eat. ”

“ That it exists in no other substance than butter made from milk, and it is introduced to oleomargarine butter by adding to oleomargarine stock some milk, cream, or butter, and churning, and that when this is done it has all the elements of natural butter, but there must always be a smaller percentage of butterine in the manufactured product than in the butter made from milk. The only effect of the butterine is to give flavor to the butter, having nothing to do with its wholesomeness. ”

“ Ghee, the East-Indian form of butter, is simply fresh butter clarified by melting, and is used as a dressing for the meal of rice. Butter, though counted as a pure fat, is in reality made up of at least six fatty principles, there being sixty-eight per cent of margarine and thirty per cent of oleine, the remainder being volatile compounds of fatty acids. In the best specimens of butter there is a slight amount of caseine, not over five per cent at most, though in poor there is much more. ”

“ All fats do not contain vitamines. The latter are found in butter, but are not present in vegetable oils and fats and in pork fat.
Butter is one of the most expensive foods of a household. Its use, therefore, must be carefully considered. Because of its pleasing flavor, for some purposes no fat is as desirable as butter. If, however, fat is to be combined with foods of pronounced flavor, i.e. foods whose flavor is strong enough to cover up other food flavors, other fats may be substituted with satisfactory results. ”

“ But we may rest assured that with a fairly liberal amount of milk and some green vegetables, possibly some beef fat, we need not fear any disastrous consequences from the substitution of some other fat for butter. Where the diet is limited and the entire quantity of fat is not very large, it seems prudent to select oleomargarine made largely from beef oil and, where circumstances permit its use without the sacrifice of any other dietary essential, to use butter in the diet of growing children unless they get a full quart of milk apiece a day. ”

“ Butter is perhaps the most digestible of all animal fats, and the most delicately flavored. So many substitutes for the genuine article are now on the market that it needs to be selected with great care. Fat being one of the elements of food depended on for the production of heat and energy in the body, butter has a place of some importance in the average invalid’s diet. For use on the tables and trays, a good quality should be procured and a cheaper grade secured for use in cooking. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The principal animal fats are butter, cream, lard, suet, the fat of mutton, pork, bacon, beef, fish and cod liver oil. The vegetable fats and oils chiefly used as food are derived from seeds, olives, and nuts. The most important fats and oils for household purposes are:
BUTTER.
Butter, which contains from 5 to 10 per cent. of water, 11.7 per cent. fat, 0.5 per cent. casein, 0.5 per cent. milk sugar (Konig) . The addition of salt to butter prevents fermentation. Butter will not support life when taken alone, but with other foods is highly nutritious and digestible. ”

“ When the pure butter-fat has been separated from the casein of milk it can be kept sweet and wholesome for a length of time sufficient to transport it, and to pass it through the various links in the chain of commerce, so that it can reach the family table a long distance from its source of production. This, in addition to man's instinctive relish for dairy products, makes butter the most popular fat in the diet of civilized man. ”

“ This is the reason that artificial butter lacks the flavor of the dairy product, and this [124] is remedied to some extent by churning the fats of the cottonseed-oil and tallow with fresh cream, which imparts a small quantity of the butyrin and similar compounds to the oleomargarin and gives the characteristic flavor of butter.
Oils as active poisons
Besides the more common fats herein mentioned there are many other fats that exist in certain vegetable oils in small proportions. These fats give the oils their characteristic properties, and may render them unfit for food. ”

“ But the composition of perfectly genuine butter-fat varies within somewhat wide limits. The milk from a cow fed on good and ample food in warm weather yields a fat that is rich in characteristic butter-constituents, while a poorly fed animal, kept in the open till late in the autumn, when the nights are cold, gives milk exceptionally poor in fat, the differences expressed as “insoluble fatty acids” lying between 86 and 91%, and in volatile acids, expressed as “Wollny” numbers, between 18 and 36. ”

“ There is an important industry which has sprung up out of animal waste, in the utilization of purified tallow and other fats for food and domestic purposes. It was originated in France in 1869 by M. Mége, and was intended for the manufacture of artificial butter from fat, by extracting the oil at a low temperature, and converting this, by churning, into butter. It was first known as oleomargarine, then as margarine, and latterly as butterine. The manufacture of this product has spread extensively, and it is carried on in the United States on a very large scale. ”

“ There is an altogether different class of butter adulteration which concerns itself with the substitution of other fatty matters for the whole or part of the really valuable portion of the butter-fat. Margarine is the legalized and therefore legitimate butter-surrogate, prepared by churning any suitable fat with milk into a cream, solidifying the latter by injection into cold water and working the lumps together, precisely as is done in the case of the churned cream of milk. ”

“ Fresh butter is a palatable form of fat, which digests easily. Like all other milk products, it must be kept clean and cold, or it will soon spoil. Butter absorbs other flavors quickly and should therefore not be placed near odorous substances. It is best unsalted and in Europe it is very commonly served thus. When people learn to demand unsalted butter they will get good butter, for no one can palm off oleomargarine or other imitations under the guise of fresh unsalted butter. Unsalted butter must be fresh or it will be refused by the nose and the palate. ”

“ The washing of butter is intended to free it from the casein and unaltered cream, and the more perfectly it is freed from those impurities the better will be its flavor, and the longer it will remain without becoming rancid. Some people believe that too much water injures the quality and lessens the quantity of butter. It cannot do the former, because the essential constituents of butter are totally insoluble in water; it may do the latter, but, if it do, so much the better, because the loss of weight represents the amount of impurities—milk, sugar of milk, &c.—removed. ”

“ Hence we see that some people are wrong when they believe butter to be a mere luxury; on the contrary, butter is a very important article of food, more especially so to children.
The reason of this is, that the fat performs a conspicuous part in the human body; it serves to keep up the process of respiration. The oxygen which is inhaled, decomposes the fat in our body and from it forms water and carbonic acid. The water evaporates through perspiration; the carbonic acid is exhaled again. Now, if there is fat in us, this perspiration and exhalation will diminish it ”

“ Talk, too, of coconut oil and its richness in butter-fat. Butter-fat! There was a word to bring one back to a workaday world. To meet it at the outset of a long-dreamed-of journey was disheartening. It followed me with the shrill insistence of a creamery whistle, and I came very near giving up my plans altogether. Nordhoff did change his. He said that it was silly, no doubt, but he didn't like the idea of wandering, however lonely, in a cloud of butter-fat islands. Therefore we said good-by, having arranged for a rendezvous at a distant date, and set out on diverging paths. ”

“ Under the microscope butterine does not appear to consist of acicular crystals of fat, but of irregular masses, containing a few butter globules, particles of curd, and crystals of salt. With polarised light the irregular crystalline structure is beautifully seen, and is clearly distinguishable from butter which has been melted and recongealed. When old and rancid it acquires the odour and taste of dripping, but it keeps longer undecomposed than butter. When fresh it is a wholesome substitute for real butter. No one can reasonably take exception to its sale. ”

“ Food fats are of both animal and vegetable origin. Fats separated from milk (butter) , meat fats (suet, lard) are animal fats while those separated from seeds (cottonseed and peanut) , cereal (corn) , fruit (olive) , nuts (coconuts) are vegetable fats. A discussion of various food fats follows:
(a) Butter is made by churning ripened cream so as to separate the fat from the other ingredients contained in milk. It is salted and usually colored before putting it on the market.
The popularity of butter is dependent upon its flavor, for its fuel value is not greater than any other fat. ”

“ Upon now drying the residue, the loss in weight will give the amount of fat present. The caseine is next determined by the loss in weight obtained upon incinerating the matters left undissolved by the ether, the remaining inorganic matter being the salt contained.
The proportion of fat present in genuine butter ranges from 82 to 90 per cent.; it should never be below 80 per cent. The average amount of caseine is 2·5 per cent.; greater proportions, frequently occurring in unadulterated butter, render it more liable to become rancid. ”

“ Young animals fed on a diet of highly purified food materials in which lard is the only kind of fat may seem fairly well but do not grow normally, while those fed the same diet in every respect except that the lard is replaced by butter grow as young animals should and are more resistant to disease. Study of other food fats shows that they may be divided into two groups, one with this growth promoting property and one without it. In general, the vegetable oils do not have it, while butter and beef oil do ”

“ The cheesy matter is a very nitrogenous body, and in presence of air and moisture not only rapidly decomposes, or decays, itself, but induces by mere contact a like state of decomposition in other substances—such, for instance, as fat, sugar, and starch, which naturally have no tendency to change their state. Bearing the foregoing facts in mind, it is obvious that the chief precautions to be observed in the manufacture of butter are:—Firstly, to separate to as great an extent as practicable the casein from the butter ”

“ Milk and cream undergo many changes after being incorporated in the finished butterine and the more cream there is in the product the lower the temperature in the tempering room should be. It is not at this stage that flavor is made. Only the flavor the product already contains is developed and many batches of sour or “off” butterine are traced to too warm tempering rooms, whereby the butter fat and oil because of their mixture with water decompose and become rancid.
FIG. 166.—MAKING BUTTERINE PRINTS.
Working. ”