Butterman

“ I never saw a little girl yet who didn't like to watch butter-making. Don't you love to run the butter-worker over it? I do, myself, for all I'm seventy-two!"
"I don't know anything about it," said Elizabeth Ann. "I don't know what you make butter out of. We always bought ours."
"Well, for goodness sakes!" said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called across the room, "Henry, did you ever! Here's Betsy saying she don't know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making butter!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ It angers me to pass a grocer’s shop, and see in the window a display of foreign butter. This is the kind of thing that makes one gloom over the prospects of England. The deterioration of English butter is one of the worst signs of the moral state of our people. Naturally, this article of food would at once betray a decline in the virtues of its maker; butter must be a subject of the dairyman’s honest pride, or there is no hope of its goodness. Begin to save your labour, to aim at dishonest profits, to feel disgust or contempt for your work—and the churn declares every one of these vices. ”

“ No butter is imported, and the quantity exported is insignificant, although there is beginning to be a foreign demand for American butter. The home consumption is estimated at the yearly rate of 20 ℔ per person, which, if correct, would indicate Americans to be the greatest butter-eating people in the world. The people of the United States also consume millions of pounds every year of butter substitutes and imitations, such as oleomargarine and butterine. ”

“ This dainty way, however, would hardly make a bad article good, and no one would crave a berry of ancient firkin butter. For, as trivial a matter as it seems, this single condiment of food, one has only to encounter it in a strong, cheesy state to feel it among the most important things in the cuisine. Then one suddenly discovers that butter is in everything. Eating becomes intolerable, living dwindles into dyspepsia, and finally one is tempted to exclaim with a certain epicure, "I wish I were under the sod! There's no lump butter in the market!" ”

“ There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the American style with salt, which, in its own kind and way, has a merit not inferior to that of England and France. Many prefer it, and it certainly takes a rank equally respectable with the other. It is yellow, hard, and worked so perfectly free from every particle of buttermilk that it might make the voyage of the world without spoiling. It is salted, but salted with care and delicacy, so that it may be a question whether even a fastidious Englishman might not prefer its golden solidity to the white, creamy freshness of his own. ”

“ As the farmers there can only make a small quantity of butter, which is apt to spoil before it can be collected for market, they readily make contracts with the butterine-makers. The factories at Oss, in Holland, alone, send an average of one hundred and fifty tons per week of oleo-margarine butter to England. There are also several firms in this country engaged in its manufacture; one firm in London can turn out from ten to twenty tons per week.
Professor Mayer in 1883 made some experiments as to the digestibility and wholesomeness of butterine as compared with dairy butter. ”

“ The effect of the enormous trade on the dairy-farming of this country may be easily imagined, and foreign dairy-farmers are also feeling the competition quite as keenly. The Professor admitted that butterine, when made in a proper way and from good materials, is a wholesome and useful article of food. He considered it beyond dispute that butter would have been outside the reach of a vast number of poor people, had not butterine come in as a substitute and lowered the price. ”

“ Should you desire to get on the good side of a lady, just give a broad, sweeping, slathering compliment to her butter. It beats kissing the dirty-faced baby; it beats anything. Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon the butter, be it good, bad, or indifferent to your notions of things, but to her, her butter is always good, superior, excellent. ”

“ A matter for despair as regards bad butter is that at the tables where it is used it stands sentinel at the door to bar your way to every other kind of food. You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread, which fills your mouth with bitterness, to your beefsteak, which proves virulent with the same poison; you think to take refuge in vegetable diet, and find the butter in the string-beans, and polluting the innocence of early peas,—it is in the corn, in the succotash, in the squash,—the beets swim in it, the onions have it poured over them. ”

“ But we are lamentably behind some of the European nations, notably the French, Germans, Austrians, and Swiss, in the making and the appreciation of first-class butter.
In some of our leading restaurants and hotels, as well as in expensive clubs and the residences of wealthy families, one may come across such butter; but one is not sure of getting the real thing even after paying the highest price. I seldom eat it at home—there are too many disappointments—and when I travel in the United States I rarely have the courage to try it. ”

“ Wiley, in whose taste, judgment and knowledge we all have so much faith says that "the best grade of butter is that which receives no treatment other than the washing and working process to which attention has been called. This kind of butter is known as natural or unsalted or uncolored butter, that is, a fresh, sweet product of an agreeable aroma, palatable, of fine texture and grain, and is the best product of its kind for human consumption. It also brings the highest price on the market." ”

“ Butteridge would be a terrible person to be on any one's track. Bert thought of the great black moustaches, the triangular nose, the searching bellow and the glare. His afternoon's dream of a marvellous seizure and sale of the great Butteridge secret crumpled up in his mind, dissolved, and vanished. ”

“ I have not, in this article, touched upon the question of Normandy butter, which has become such a formidable competitor with English markets, but to diversify the road to Dieppe, let our cyclist take the road by Gournay through Neuchâtel-en-Bray, and visit on a Tuesday the butter-market. I think when one sees the uniformity of the splendid quality of butter in that market, and the severe scrutiny to which it is subjected by the merchants, one realises partly why Normandy butter has such a high character. Some thousands of pounds of butter change hands there in a day. ”

“ In the States a considerable quantity of butter is produced by small farmers, and by the time the product comes into the market the addition of chemical preservatives to prevent decomposition not being permitted—the butter has so much deteriorated in quality that it fetches a very low price. It is bought up by factors, the fat melted out and washed, then again worked up with water and salt, care being generally taken to leave about 16% of water in the product, which finds a ready sale in England. ”

“ 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. ”

“ FLAVOR IN BUTTER.
On every table in the land, except that of the very poor, there is one article which appears two or three times a day all the year round, and that article is butter. More than $300,000,000 worth of it is consumed every year in the United States. One would therefore suppose that the public would insist with all its might and main on having its butter good. It does no such thing, but meekly accepts the indifferent and often vile stuff offered by dealers—an unpalatable lubricator which I would no more think of eating than I would axle grease. ”

“ A Victorian butter factory is a delightful sight. The scrupulous cleanliness, the huge tanks of cream, the vast churns at work, and, above all, the great swiftly-revolving disc of wood upon which the butter is worked. Delicious stuff it is, too, a rich, deep, natural yellow colour, and fresh flavour; infinitely superior to the ordinary home-made product, where the cream is often kept too long, in the effort to collect enough to be worth the churning. ”

“ They would rather have it than the stale butter from the village shop; but since butter is made on all farms, and many farmers' wives send the parson butter to pay off their subscriptions, the parson's larder overflows with butter, while many other necessaries are scarce. It is the same with potatoes and cabbages and beetroots, with eggs, and with hay for the minister's horse, which, by the way, is not forgotten when the time for paying subscriptions comes round. The minister loves his horse, and is glad to have plenty of hay and oats for it to eat ”

“ Butter is not exempt from adulteration: the inferior kinds are frequently mixed up with hogs-lard which has lost its flavour and appearance; and not unfrequently kitchen-stuff forms a portion of the bulk.
Good butter is hard and firm; therefore that butter which is often sold in the shops in London, that adheres to the knife when applied to, or stuck into it, is factitious, that is, manufactured in a machine, of the following materials—viz. rancid fresh butter, the cheap unsaleable Scotch butters of various hues and dyes, and a quantity of salt, well rummaged and pomelled together. ”

“ It is safe to say, therefore, that good butter depends more upon the manufacture than upon any other one thing, and perhaps than all others put together. So important is this point, that a judicious writer remarks that “in every district where good butter is made it is universally attributed to the richness of the pastures, though it is a well-known fact that, take a skilful dairymaid from that district into another, where good butter is not usually made, and where, of course, the pastures are deemed very unfavorable, she will make butter as good as she used to do. ”

“ Where butter-making forms a chief branch of dairy business, the particular form and size which have been used for a long time are adhered to, because dairymen know very well that the public recognizes their choice butter by the form and size of the casks, and buys it the more readily. The greatest anxiety of the Dutch butter-maker is to keep up the old, well-earned reputation which Dutch butter has in every foreign country, both for its intrinsic good qualities, the result of the process of manufacture, and for its extraordinary appearance as an article of commerce. ”

“ Our buttero is probably the son and the father of a race which follows the same occupation. The knowledge and skill which are absolutely necessary to his profession, and which are acquired no otherwise than traditionally, have a tendency to produce this result. He grew up to be a buttero, with a consummate knowledge of horses and horned cattle, and a sure eye for the condition of the pastures from one to another district of which the animals are constantly moving, under the eye of his father, who put him on a half-broken colt almost as soon as he could walk. ”

“ You must have eaten up your butter yourself!”
“Of course I haven’t eaten it up myself!” the Wolf declared. “I just bet anything you took it!”
The Fox pretended to be much aggrieved.
“Pekka, I won’t have you saying such a thing! We must get at the bottom of this! I tell you what we’ll do: we’ll both lie down in the sun and the heat of the sun will melt the butter and make it run. Now then, if butter runs out of my nose then I’m the one that has eaten your butter; if it runs out of your nose, then you’ve eaten it yourself. Do you agree to this test?” ”

“ The more general practice is to "skim" just as the milk gives unmistakable signs of acidity, or thickens a very little on the bottom of the pan or can. A few prefer to skim the cream sweet, and still another few let the milk lopper. This wide divergence of opinion and practice shows how very imperfectly is the real philosophy of butter making understood; but, notwithstanding this, each one is usually very tenacious in his belief as to the superiority of his own practice. A few fancy butter makers say that the finest butter is made from sweet cream, raised in cold air by shallow setting. ”

“ 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. ”