344 



SALTING THE BUTTER 



butter to some extent, and in the case of butter made from 

 insufficiently chilled cream this decrease may be very great. 

 This does not necessarily mean, however, that the finished prod- 

 uct is lower in moisture in the case of salted butter than in 

 the case of unsalted butter. The expulsion of moisture by the 

 salt occurs during the first few revolutions of the workers. As 

 the working continues, especially with the churn doors closed, 

 brine is reincorporated and the moisture content again in- 

 creases. Salted butter, at the conclusion of the working process 

 may, therefore, contain as much water as unsalted butter, the 

 salt replacing a corresponding portion of the fat and not of the 

 water, causing salted butter to be lower in butterfat than un- 

 salted butter. This fact is demonstrated in the following 

 table: 1 



Table 53. Showing Effect of Amount of Salt on Moisture and 



Fat Content of Butter When the Butter is Worked With the 



Churn Gates Closed. 



April, 1907 (before storage) worked 12 revolutions 



When butter is placed i ncold storage the loss of moisture 

 in salted butter is very much greater than that in unsalted but- 

 ter, as shown in experimental data 1 in Table 54. 



As shown in Table 54, the loss of moisture of but- 

 ter in cold storage is greatest in heavily salted butter, while 

 it is very slight in lightly salted butter. While unsalted but- 

 ter lost no moisture in eight months storage at 6 F., lightly 

 salted butter lost .42 per cent and heavily salted butter as 

 high as 3.08 per cent. Similar results were obtained in exper- 



1 Hunziker, Mills and Spitzer. Moisture Control of Butter, Purdue Bulletin 

 160, 1912, p. 399. 



