120 RECEIVING MII<K AND CREAM 



important step are already convinced of its permanent advan- 

 tages and it is only a question of time when all creameries, for 

 their own protection, will adopt a rational system of cream grad- 

 ing and paying on the basis of quality. They are bound 

 to come to the inevitable conclusion that, in order to secure 

 satisfactory returns from the market, they must furnish the 

 market with good butter, that they cannot hold the patronage 

 of the cream producer to furnish good cream unless they pay 

 him a differential on the basis of quality, and that the paying of 

 top prices for butterfat of poor quality must ultimately spell 

 financial loss and ruin. 



Methods of Grading. One of the serious obstacles that has 

 been responsible for much delay in the general adoption of grad- 

 ing cream has been the difficulty of doing this work correctly, 

 and the absence of a method practical, rapid and applicable under 

 average creamery conditions. Efforts to use chemical, physical 

 or bacteriological tests that would yield results of specific de- 

 scription and that would make possible the expression of different 

 grades in mathematical figures, have so far failed to solve this 

 difficult problem of cream grading. Such tests as the acid test, 

 the boiling test, the sediment test, the curd test, the fermenta- 

 tion test, the microscopic test, which have been in successful use 

 in market milk plants and milk condenseries for years, were 

 found either mechanically impractical with cream, or their results 

 were unsuited for the proper classification of different grades of 

 cream. The acid test is practically the only test that could be 

 applied under average conditions of cream and creamery manage- 

 ment. But its results too, lack conclusiveness, because they fail 

 to furnish a correct index to the relative fitness of cream for 

 buttermaking. While, generally speaking, sweet cream is pref- 

 erable to sour cream, the acidity in cream is by no means the 

 chief defect of cream of inferior quality. This test has there- 

 fore never been adopted for general use in creameries. 



The really important characteristics of cream which deter- 

 mine its quality, are its odor and flavor and these can be deter- 

 mined successfully only by the senses of smell and taste. Ef- 

 ficient cream grading, therefore, of necessity resolves itself into 



