582 RENOVATED BUTTER 



skimmilk, or buttermilk, or cream, sweet or sour, and by granu- 

 lating the mix by cooling. Renovated butter may, or may not 

 have added to it, common salt, or harmless coloring matter, or 

 both. 



Renovated butter is usually made from an inferior grade of 

 butter, the quality of which is such that the butter is no longer 

 acceptable to the trade as eatable butter. It is made from pack- 

 ing stock. 



Development of the Renovated Butter Industry. The 

 renovated butter industry had its inception in the presence upon 

 the market, of butter of poor quality, that could neither be sold 

 as butter nor made over into a salable quality of "ladles." It 

 had to undergo processes that freed it from its obnoxious odors 

 and flavors of which rancidity was a dominant one, before it 

 could be made again to appeal to the palate. This industry, 

 therefore, owes its existence to faulty methods of manufacture 

 and of storing of butter. 



The renovated butter industry, then, is the result of efforts, 

 on the part of the dairymen, butter merchants and others, to 

 convert the surplus of poor country butter, or of packing stock, 

 into a marketable product. The bulk of dairy butter made 

 during the summer months is handled by the country store. 

 For a considerable portion of this butter the country store 

 has no immediate market. The butter accumulates and owing to 

 its inherent poor keeping quality and the usually unfavorable 

 conditions to which it is exposed, it deteriorates rapidly, and by 

 fall it is generally of very poor quality. This butter is a 

 burden to the store keeper and a drag on the market. 



Before the days of renovated butter, the only reasonably 

 profitable method of handling this surplus was to rework the 

 different lots together, adding salt and if necessary, color. This 

 gave the product uniformity of body, salt and color. The flavor 

 however, was not improved, except that heavy salting assisted 

 in hiding to a limited extent the undesirable flavors. 



In the early eighties, various isolated attempts were made 

 to free this butter from its disagreeable flavors. Levi Wells 1 

 states that "melting butter and separating the fat from the 



1 Wells, Renovated Butter, Its Origin and History, U. S. Dept. of Agri- 

 culture, 1905. 



