44 DAIRYING 



for a longer time than the sweet cream butter, because the ripening 

 before churning has reduced the amount of curd left in the butter. 



The expression is often heard that butter which is once good is 

 always good, meaning that high scoring butter will retain its good 

 qualities better than butter which has never been exceptionally 

 fine. This is undoubtedly true in many cases, but exceptions are 

 so common that it can hardly be accepted as a foundation principle 

 in buttermaking. Cases have frequently been known in which 

 prize butter has gone "off" flavor in a short time after it was 

 scored; and while such instances may not be so common as those 

 in which high scoring butter has retained its good qualities longer 

 than poorer butter, still the exceptional case is of sufficiently fre- 

 quent occurrence to make it unsafe to predict the future of any 

 piece of butter with certainty. 



473. Many opinions and more or less positive statements re- 

 garding butter flavors are sometimes advanced which cannot be 

 proved, but they receive a certain amount of respectful attention 

 because of the inability of the listener to contradict them. Such 

 statements are often based on a few observations made without the 

 support of scientific investigation, which up to the present time has 

 not revealed the principles or laws on which butter flavor and its 

 keeping quality is founded. If these laws were known it would 

 be possible so to formulate them that men of ordinary intelligence 

 could follow their directions and obtain uniformly good results. 



474. The part which bacteria, lactic acid and curd play in 

 butter making is not thoroughly understood by the best author- 

 ities, but the ripening of cream with a pure culture of lactic acid 

 bacteria either alone or with some of the so-called flavor-producing 

 bacteria is recommended as good practice. The results obtained 

 will be influenced by the cleanliness, and the sweetness of the 

 cream started with, and the ability of the butter maker to judge 

 when to check the ripening process and when to churn the cream. 



LENGTH OF RIPENING PROCESS 



475. The rate or rapidity with which cream ripens may be in- 

 fluenced by a variety of conditions. Some of these conditions are : 



