XL.WINTER BUTTER.
MUCH has been said and written on making winter butter. Our papers bring daily complaints of the article as sold in our markets, and furnish us with many elaborate directions how to overcome an evil which can no longer be meekly endured.
In large butter factories, with every facility for preserving uniform temperature, it is not easy to accept any excuse for poor butter, summer or winter; but when butter is only made in small quantities, simply for family consumption, and at a time when the cows are giving much less milk than in the summer and fall, there is a necessity for more care and labor in securing good butter than when we can furnish green pastures and fresh food for the cows. Still we all expect, and should be willing to accept, more discomforts in our winter’s labors than we find in warm weather. Aside from these considerations we fail to see any insurmountable difficulty in securing good sweet butter in the winter. Of course we do not look for yellow butter at this season of the year, and when we see it we distrust its purity; but the golden color, though desirable, as a pleasure to the eye, is not an essential. For years we made a large portion of our own butter from only one cow, with but a few conveniences, and with very limited accommodations to aid us in the work; but we never hadbitterbutter, and have never found a good reason why any one should be compelled to suffer from that infliction.
In the first place, a great deal depends on having pure, clear milk to start with, and to secure that we think a warm,clean shelter and good food should be provided for the animals. Aside from good hay, free from mustiness, they should have as large a supply of roots—beets, pumpkins, carrots, or potatoes, whichever is the most convenient, or some of all—as you can furnish; but whatever is given should be entirely free from decay, if you would have a healthy cow and pure milk.
The milk will receive no unnatural flavor from any or all of these roots; but no skill can conceal the use of cabbages or turnips, however small the quantity. We know many affirm that they invariably give them to their milch cows and perceive no disagreeable taste in the milk from their use. Judging from much of the butter found in our markets, we can easily believe that cabbages and turnips were lavishly fed to the cows from whose milk the butter was made; and how any one can fail to notice the unpleasant flavor given by such food we cannot understand. Still, we will not quarrel with those who choose to use these esculents so long as our cows are not fed with them and we are not obliged to eat the butter.
Warm food, at least once a day, is not only good for the animal, but insures a better quality and larger quantity of milk and butter. It is very little trouble to put a large kettle over the stove or range early in the morning, and boil such small potatoes as are not nice for table use, or a few carrots, together with all the parings of potatoes or the rind of pumpkins left from cooking. When they have become soft, mash with a long-handled masher, such as any boy of ten has sufficient skill to make; then thicken the water in which they were boiled with a few handfuls of “shorts” or coarse barley or oatmeal; corn meal will decrease the quantity of milk and fatten the cow. Give your cows a generous feed of thismushonce a day at least, and they will amply repay your care by increasing and enriching the supply of milk.
With your cows thus fed, kept dry and warm, well cleaned and curried,—for a cow needs that care as much as a horse,—you will have good milk, and from it cream which, with proper care, can be as readily made intogoodbutter in winter as in summer.
Now as to “proper care,” we speak only of private families who have but one or two cows. If your milk-room is in the cellar, it should be entirely separated from the vegetable cellar, and used for nothing that can impart any flavor to the milk, either meats, roots, sauces, or fluids. If it is well cemented and banked up, so as to prevent freezing, you will have very little trouble in keeping the milk warm enough for the cream to begin to rise quickly. Of course you will pour boiling water into the pans, and have them well heated before straining the milk into them. If you have on hand two sizes of pans, fill the larger one third full of boiling water, then strain the milk into a smaller pan, filling it not half full, and set it into the hot water; turn another pan over the top, but not close enough to exclude all air. By so doing you will find that the cream will rise more rapidly and can be more easily churned. When one has but little milk, this is not much trouble.
If you have no cellar that can be kept warm and free from the smell of vegetables, set your milk on a shelf, in a warm closet, where, of course, you will keep no vegetables or meats, as nothing is so easily impregnated with odors of all kinds as milk. Cover the pans or bowls with a fine net, to exclude dust or motes of any kind.
Thirty-six hours is as long as milk should remain unskimmed, summer or winter. Every hour longer, even though the milk may taste sweet, is insuring bitter butter. As you skim off the cream, stir it well each time. The cream should not be in the cream-pot longer than two days before churning. Three daysmaygive you moderately good butter, but it is a very doubtful experiment.
“But how can we churn every two days when we do not gather more than a quart of cream in that time? It would be lost in our churn; we could do nothing with it.”
Take it into a large bowl, and beat or stir it steadily with a silver or wooden spoon. It will take you no longer than to churn in the regular manner, and you will secure a nice roll of sweet butter. But a better, because an easier and more convenient way, is to buy a tall one-gallon stone jar, and get a carpenter to turn you a handle; put on two cross-pieces at the bottom, full of holes; or a circle small enough to go into the jar; pierce this circle with holes as large as a thimble; another circle for a cover, just to fit the top of the jar, with a hole in the center that will slip over the handle, and you have a nice churn, dasher and all. Now put on your large apron, lay a book on the table before you, take your little churn in your lap or on a bench by your side, and read, churn, and rock the cradle if need be (reading and rocking the cradle are not essential, but are very pleasant additions). In fifteen minutes’ steady churning you will find the butter has come, and can be brought together in this tiny churn as nicely as you can desire. If you can’t get at a carpenter, ask your husband or son to do it; or, failing there, haven’t you mechanical skill sufficient to make a dasher and fit it to a stone jar yourself? A piece of a broom-stick, scoured and polished with sand-paper (or if you have no sand-paper scrape it clean and smooth with a bit of glass); two cross-pieces full of holes, screwed on to the bottom of the stick; a round piece fitted into the top of the jar for cover,—you canwhittleit smooth, can you not?—with a hole for the handle to pass through, and you have just as serviceable a churn as any carpenter could make you, only, perhaps, lacking a little in the finish a carpenter might have given.
Now, as to the working of the butter: some say, wash itfaithfully; others insist that no water should come in contact with the butter. If you have strength and skill enough to work out all the buttermilk with a ladle, or a hand cool and firm enough to toss it from one hand to the other, giving quick, skillful blows as it passes, so that every drop of buttermilk may be beaten out, then we say,never wash the butter. But although you do, and by washing must lose some of the rich flavor our mother’s butter used to have, before there were any “modern improvements,” still, better so than not secure entire freedom from buttermilk. If any remains, you cannot have butter that will keep sweet one week.
Take the butter from the churn into a wooden bowl that has been well scalded, and then soaked and cooled in cold water, and with the ladle press out all the buttermilk you can; this done, throw a handful of salt into three or four quarts of cold water, and wash the butter quickly and thoroughly with it; the salt causes the buttermilk to flow off more readily; pour off the salt-water, and wash again with clear cold water till it runs clear, drain off and sprinkle over the butter what salt it requires to suit your own taste. There is such a variety of tastes, that the exact quantity of salt cannot be easily given. We use a table-spoonful of salt to a pound of butter. Press the butter into a compact form, after working in the salt, cover over with a clean cloth, and set it away to harden. The next morning break up and work it over once more; make into neat rolls or prints, put it into a stone pot, and cover with brine strong enough to bear up an egg. Try this and see if you cannot have good butter in winter.