DAIRY FARMING 



Butter 



Flavour of 

 Butter. 



Time 

 required. 



Temperature. 



Germs 

 necessary. 



Presence of 

 Milk. 



Bancid Butter. 



Boiled 



Soured-milk 



Butter. 



Churns. 



Botatory 

 Whisk. 



Vertical 



Plunging 



Action. 



observes that " butter is obtained by beating their cream into a substance 

 like unto a thick oyl, for in that hot climate they can never make it hard, 

 which though soft is very sweet and good." Fresh cream (that is to say 

 whole milk) yields a smaller quantity and an inferior flavoured butter 

 than matured cream. The peculiar flavour of butter is, in fact, very often 

 a question of the method and degree of ripening that has been pursued. 

 Moreover the best butter-makers lay stress on the necessity for the cream 

 being repeatedly stirred during the ripening process. The time required 

 depends on the temperature of the atmosphere. It will be sufficiently 

 ripe in from 12 to 24 hours if the temperature average from 60 to 70 F., 

 according to Fleischmann, but 90 F. according to Meagher and Vaughan ; 

 below 60 it will take 48 hours, but cream should never be allowed to fall 

 below 55 F. 



The study of the exact germs concerned in the production of recognised 

 flavours of butter is by no means complete, but is engaging the attention 

 of experts. In the near future pure cultures for the maturing of cream 

 may be demanded but the subject is at present not understood, and both 

 in Europe and in India empirical rules prevail. Cream is not pure butter- 

 fat, but is a mixture of that substance floating in milk. The milk sours, 

 the lactic acid precipitates the casein, and thus forms butter-milk. Butter, 

 however, always retains some proportion of the sour curd mechanically 

 mixed with it, and upon this depends the souring of the butter and its 

 rancid flavour. 



Churning. Butter consists of the consolidated oil globules present in 

 the milk. These are collected together and compacted into butter by 

 various contrivances that may be called churns. As already fully ex- 

 plained, a small proportion only of butter is made in India from the milk 

 as it comes from the cow. There is very little or no cream-butter made 

 by the ordinary Indian milkmen, for the reason that the climate will not 

 allow of the milk being set on one side until the cream rises to the surface. 

 Recently, however, cream separators have been introduced at the larger 

 centres and cream-butter has in consequence to a certain extent come into 

 use. The bulk of the Indian butter is of a kind practically unknown to 

 Europe, namely boiled soured-milk butter. It has been estimated that 

 Indian milk yields butter at the rate of one pound to every ] 4 pints of best 

 cow's milk or 9 pints of buffalo's milk ; with separators very much smaller 

 quantities will, however, suffice. The amount of butter nowadays made 

 from separated cream is fairly large, and Bombay and Aligarh might be 

 spoken of as the centres of the trade. 



In The Agricultural Ledger (1895, No. 23) I have described the churns most 

 commonly met with in India. The simplest contrivance of all is a wide-mouthed 

 bottle or bamboo joint into which a quantity of milk is placed and shaken in the 

 hand until the butter forms. Methods of preserving milk and of preparing ^from 

 it special articles of human diet, that would wholly or partially withstand climatic 

 tendencies, must have early become axioms of household economy in India. 

 But in the consequent development of this knowledge it would seem that the 

 introduction within the liquid of a contrivance intended more fully to agitate 

 it, than could be attained by shaking in a bottle, would be a natural and simple 

 one, which might fairly well have suggested itself spontaneously to the most 

 remote and diverse races. The first conception of this would most probably be 

 a beater worked by the hand. The step from that to a rotatory whisk would 

 be a direct and necessary one. But a vertical plunging action might not so 

 readily suggest itself. This is the position in India. The rotatory churn is 

 common, the vertical rare, though both forms exist. Whether or not the Aryans 

 introduced the rotatory churn, the one most generally used throughout India, 



476 



