1 82 BACTERIA IN BUTTER AND OLEOMARGARINE. 
has become more and more apparent with each step toward the 
concentration of butter-making. The farmer may, perhaps, 
allow his cream to care for itself, since his product is so small. 
But such a plan would ruin a creamery where there are thousands 
of pounds of butter made each day. Only as the ripening can be 
controlled, is concentration of butter-making successful. 
The Purposes of Cream-ripening. These are as follows: 
1. Ripening the cream makes it churn more easily and increases 
the yield of butter. This is true, at all events, for gravity cream; 
it is less significant, and perhaps not true, for separator cream. 
2. Butter made from properly ripened cream is thought to keep 
better. 3. By far the most important purpose in cream-ripening 
is the production in the butter of a desirable flavor and aroma. 
Butter made from unripened cream lacks the peculiar flavor of 
high-grade butter, since this is the result of the ripening. If the 
ripening is not satisfactory, the flavor and aroma of the butter are 
sure to be inferior. 
The importance of this factor in butter-making for our creameries 
is very great. The market price of butter depends largely upon the 
flavor. Butter without flavor or with bad flavor brings a price 
in the market which hardly pays for the making, while a product 
with a good flavor and aroma will sell for at least three or four cents 
more a pound; and the exceptionally fine-flavored product of special 
creameries brings a fancy price two or three times that of poor butter. 
The flavor will frequently add one-third or one-half to the price 
which could be obtained for poorly flavored butter or for butter 
without flavor. Hence, the success or failure of a creamery business 
depends, in large measure, upon the ripening. A creamery 
which fails to ripen its cream properly fails to obtain a desirable 
flavor. Hence, it obtains a lower price for its butter and may 
hardly meet expenses; while a neighboring creamery, that is more 
successful in its cream-ripening, obtains a good product and, 
consequently, a price for its butter which makes the business a 
financial success. This matter is of more significance to-day than 
in earlier years, because our butter-making is coming to be concen- 
trated in large creameries. 
