THE SCIENCE OF BAD BUTTER.Weonce took occasion to give our opinion of the butter which was largely brought to our market. The article was deemed severe; but if they who think so had eaten of the butter they would have regardedthatas the more pungent of the two. We have waited a year; and are now prepared more fully to testify against that utter abomination, slanderously called butter, so unrighteously exchanged in our market for good money. Far the most part, the cream is totally depraved at the start, and churning, working, and packing are only the successive steps of an evil education by which bad inclinations are developed into overt wickedness. We determined to keep an eye upon the matter; and now give, from life, the natural history of the butter sold.Before doing this, we will express an opinion of what isgood butter.Good butteris made of sweet cream, with perfect neatness; is of a high color, perfectly sweet, free from buttermilk, and possesses a fine grass flavor.Tolerable butterdiffers from this only in not having afine flavor. It is devoid of all unpleasant taste, but has not a high relish.Whatever is less than this is bad butter; the catalogue is long and the descending scale is marked with more varieties than one may imagine.Variety 1.Butter-milk Butter.—This has not been well worked, and has the taste of fresh buttermilk. It is not very disagreeable to such as love fresh buttermilk; but as it is a flavor not expected in good butter, it is usually disagreeable.Variety 2.Strong Butter.—This is one step farther along, and the buttermilk is changing and beginning to assert its right to predominate over the butteraceous flavor;yet it may be eaten with some pleasure if done rapidly, accompanied with very good bread.Variety 3.Frowy or frowsy Butter.—This is a second degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent-minded eaters.Variety 4.Rancid Butter.—This is the putrescent stage. No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it, an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those whohave, will hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by any description.Variety 5.Bitter Butter.—Bitterness is, for the most part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he will be very apt to have bitter butter.Variety 6.Musty Butter.—In summer, especially in damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold; Whenever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if theflavorof mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the man who needs to be told it!Variety 7.Sour-milk Butter.—This is made from milk which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour milk.Variety 8.Vinegar Butter.—There are some who imagine that all milk should besouredbefore it is fit to churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The butter strongly retains the flavor thereof.Variety 9.Cheesy Butter.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt toseparate and deposit awhey: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor.Variety 10.Granulated Butter.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it produces butter full ofgrains, as if there were meal in it.Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—too saltandunsalted butter. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding.Variety 12.Lard Butter.—When lard is cheap and abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to combine the two.Variety 13.Mixed Butter.—When the shrewd housewife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them together, and those who buy, find out that “Union isstrength!” Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled.Variety 14.Compound Butter.—By compound butter we mean that which has received contributions from things animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth, threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds; in short, everything is at one time or another to be found in it, going to produce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty.Variety 15.Tough Butter.—When butter is worked too long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey, putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, however, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place.Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced; besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather; butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which Solomon assures us causeth the ointment to stink; besides butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes; besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are several others with which we have formed an acquaintance, but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings with more than mesmeric facility!And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill-deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood are a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery; mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn into an utterly nauseating abomination.Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk; give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean yourself; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet, churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus; work it thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working; put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God that you are an honest woman!
Weonce took occasion to give our opinion of the butter which was largely brought to our market. The article was deemed severe; but if they who think so had eaten of the butter they would have regardedthatas the more pungent of the two. We have waited a year; and are now prepared more fully to testify against that utter abomination, slanderously called butter, so unrighteously exchanged in our market for good money. Far the most part, the cream is totally depraved at the start, and churning, working, and packing are only the successive steps of an evil education by which bad inclinations are developed into overt wickedness. We determined to keep an eye upon the matter; and now give, from life, the natural history of the butter sold.
Before doing this, we will express an opinion of what isgood butter.
Good butteris made of sweet cream, with perfect neatness; is of a high color, perfectly sweet, free from buttermilk, and possesses a fine grass flavor.
Tolerable butterdiffers from this only in not having afine flavor. It is devoid of all unpleasant taste, but has not a high relish.
Whatever is less than this is bad butter; the catalogue is long and the descending scale is marked with more varieties than one may imagine.
Variety 1.Butter-milk Butter.—This has not been well worked, and has the taste of fresh buttermilk. It is not very disagreeable to such as love fresh buttermilk; but as it is a flavor not expected in good butter, it is usually disagreeable.
Variety 2.Strong Butter.—This is one step farther along, and the buttermilk is changing and beginning to assert its right to predominate over the butteraceous flavor;yet it may be eaten with some pleasure if done rapidly, accompanied with very good bread.
Variety 3.Frowy or frowsy Butter.—This is a second degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent-minded eaters.
Variety 4.Rancid Butter.—This is the putrescent stage. No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it, an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those whohave, will hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by any description.
Variety 5.Bitter Butter.—Bitterness is, for the most part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he will be very apt to have bitter butter.
Variety 6.Musty Butter.—In summer, especially in damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold; Whenever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if theflavorof mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the man who needs to be told it!
Variety 7.Sour-milk Butter.—This is made from milk which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour milk.
Variety 8.Vinegar Butter.—There are some who imagine that all milk should besouredbefore it is fit to churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The butter strongly retains the flavor thereof.
Variety 9.Cheesy Butter.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt toseparate and deposit awhey: if this is strained into the churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy flavor.
Variety 10.Granulated Butter.—When, in winter, sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it produces butter full ofgrains, as if there were meal in it.
Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite kinds—too saltandunsalted butter. We have seen butter exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight. When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of grinding.
Variety 12.Lard Butter.—When lard is cheap and abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to combine the two.
Variety 13.Mixed Butter.—When the shrewd housewife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them together, and those who buy, find out that “Union isstrength!” Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled.
Variety 14.Compound Butter.—By compound butter we mean that which has received contributions from things animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth, threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds; in short, everything is at one time or another to be found in it, going to produce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty.
Variety 15.Tough Butter.—When butter is worked too long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey, putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, however, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place.
Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced; besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather; butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which Solomon assures us causeth the ointment to stink; besides butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes; besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are several others with which we have formed an acquaintance, but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings with more than mesmeric facility!
And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill-deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood are a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery; mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn into an utterly nauseating abomination.
Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk; give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean yourself; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet, churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus; work it thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working; put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God that you are an honest woman!