346 



WORKING THE BUTTER 



Table 55. Salt Content in Fresh and Stored Butter, 1 



WORKING THE BUTTER 



Purpose. The fundamental purpose of working- the butter 

 is to completely dissolve, uniformly distribute and properly in- 

 corporate the salt, to accomplish as complete as possible a 

 fusion between brine and water in butter, and to bring the 

 granules of butter together into a compact mass for convenient 

 handling and packing. Incidentally the working process fur- 

 ther serves to expel buttermilk and to control the moisture 

 content of butter. The working is an important -part of butter 

 manufacture, it is a science which requires knowledge, and it 

 is above all an art that demands experience and judgment on 

 the part of the operator, if uniformly satisfactory results are 

 to be obtained. 



Butter Workers. There is a great variety of butter 

 workers on the market, in principle they are conveniently di- 

 vided into two classes, namely those which are independent 

 of the churn, and in the use of which the butter is taken out of 

 the churn, and those which are a part of the churn, known as 

 the combined churns and workers. 



To the first group belong all the handworkers such as are 

 generally used in farm buttermaking and the mechanical table 

 workers which were formerly used in American creameries and 

 are still used to a considerable extent in European creameries. 

 These independent butter workers consist of a bowl, tray or 

 table on which the butter is placed and where it is worked 

 with ladles, or with a lever, or by one or more revolving cor- 



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

 160, 1912. 



