356 WORKING THS BUTTER 



and exceedingly small units which give the butter an opaque 

 whitish color. These droplets remain in this condition during 

 the process of working. Working therefore has no noticeable 

 effect on the color of unsalted butter. 



But not so in the case of salted butter. . When butter is 

 salted many of these small water droplets run together, forming 

 fewer but larger units or drops. This causes the opaque whitish 

 appearance to vanish and to be replaced by a clear, more trans- 

 lucent and more deeply yellow color, approaching more nearly 

 the natural color of pure butterfat. As the working process 

 proceeds these large droplets are gradually divided again into 

 smaller droplets and as this division and increase of number of 

 small water droplets progresses, the color of the butter begins to 

 lose some of its clear, translucent, bright yellowness. By continu- 

 ing the working process to the point where the water droplets are 

 reduced to their original very small size which they presented 

 before salting, the color of the butter can be returned to the 

 opaque whiteness of the unsalted butter. This can only be 

 done, however, by greatly overworking the butter. 



The above phenomenon also explains why different portions 

 of butter from one and the same churning show different shades 

 of yellow, when all the butter in the churn does not receive an 

 equal amount of working, as may be the case when the workers 

 slip or are overloaded. 



Insufficiently worked butter has a loose, open and often a 

 leaky body. A plug of such butter drawn from the tub or cube 

 usually shows lack of compactness and sometimes marked 

 crumbliness. In the case of salted butter, such butter is often 

 gritty, due to the presence of undissolved salt and it usually is 

 streaked or mottled in color, due to the incomplete fusion of 

 brine and water and the consequent uneven size and distribution 

 of the water and brine droplets. While still in the churn, such 

 butter generally has a loose body, being profusely perforated with 

 water pockets which are plainly visible when the butter is cut 

 with the ladle. Unsalted butter, while it may be crumbly and 

 may lack the plasticity of properly worked butter, is compact 

 and free from excessive leakiness, even when very insufficiently 

 worked, and such butter does not become streaky nor mottled 



