361] GRADING AND JUDGING BUTTER l ^j 



butter differently from domestic butter are therefore ap- 

 parent. It will be seen therefore that the relative weights 

 assigned to the grade elements, if properly judged, corres- 

 pond to the relative importance attached to these elements 

 by the consuming public. 



Scoring butter as a method of determining butter values 

 has in it a good deal of what may be called the human 

 equation. The butter judge must fully comprehend the 

 relative importance that the public attaches to the respective 

 grade elements. In addition, his judgment of butter must 

 be keen. It is a well-established principle in psychology 

 that continued attention to a given stimulus will tend to 

 diminish the intensity of the sensation. This is what actu- 

 ally does happen to the butter judge. After having tasted 

 and smelled butter for some time, his senses of taste and 

 smell become dull and it is necessary to stop and eat an 

 apple or take a drink of a kind that has a distinctive odor 

 and taste. This change sharpens the sense of smell and 

 taste for butter, and enables him to proceed in the work of 

 judging. But in spite of the fact that judgment is a large 

 factor in scoring butter, the difference in the total scores 

 of butter as judged by different expert judges is not great, 

 and for commercial purposes, not important. 



THE USES OF GRADING 



Grading is not only used in the trade, but is used for the 

 performance of experiments in butter-making and in edu- 

 cational and other contests. 



Producers and dairy schools conduct experiments for the 

 purpose of improving the quality of their butter. The re- 

 sults of the experiments can only be determined by the 

 score that an expert judge will give the butter produced. 

 For instance, the butter-maker may be anxious to determine 

 the effect of pasteurization of the milk upon the quality of 



