266 ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW-YORK 



Working Butter is a part of butter making, whicli is generally 

 very imperfectly understood. After the butter has come, the 

 whole mass holds more or less buttermilk mechanically, in large 

 globules, which must be got out, in order to preserve the butter. 

 Were it not for this buttermilk, butter would need no working; 

 therefore, working butter is a purely mechanical operation, and 

 any process or machine, Avliich will liberate the buttermilk, by 

 w^orking over the butter the least is the best. Submitting a clump 

 of butter to a powerful pressure, will by no means force out the 

 buttermilk, even if it is hard or soft, or only very pliable. It is 

 always very difficult to get the buttermilk all out, when butter is 

 very soft or very hard. Working butter by passing a roller over 

 it, is by no means a good and economical way of getting out the 

 buttermilk. Passing it between corrugated or fluted rollers, by 

 which it is crushed, mashed, or flattened out, is a very slow pro- 

 cess of getting out the buttermilk, and before it can all be thoroughly 

 worked out by such a process, the flavor of the butter will cer- 

 tainly be injured, more or less. Working butter with the bare 

 hands, as thousands do, is the most laborious and injurious mode, 

 and those who practice it always complain most bitterly, of the 

 very great expenditure of strength, in working only a little mass. 

 The hands and fingers are very inefficient and impotent instru-^ 

 ments to press or squeeze anything with, because, in them we 

 cannot avail ourselves of any mechanical advantage. A far more 

 economical mode would be, w^here the bare hands are used, to 

 mount on it with the bare feet. This would be no more sordid, 

 nor ridiculous, than working it with the hands. By melting 

 butter, only a little, we destroy its excellent flavor, and render it 

 adhesive and salvy; and as the hands are warm enough to melt 

 butter, it cannot be worked with them without injuring it, more 

 or less; and if good butter can be made by working with the hands 

 or feet, or a rolling press, we may rest assured that by using a 

 good WT)rker for getting out the milk, butter of a very superior 

 quality may be made. Working butter with a ladle is the true 

 and philosophical mode of getting out the milk, but it is a very 

 laborious and slow process, and requires the expenditure of a vast 

 amount of unnecessary strength; because we are not able, with a 

 ladle, to avail ourseves of any mechanical advantage, neither in ■ 

 gashing the butter nor in pressing it. Since the grand object of 



