DAIRYING 53 



the butter is inferior in quality ; but that the familiar taste is lack- 

 ing. 



488. A uniformity in the salt, the color and the texture of 

 butter is the result of careful and uniform workmanship, which is 

 largely mechanical ; but to make butter which shall have a uniform 

 flavor throughout the year requires a certain amount of expertness 

 and good judgment, that is something more than mechanical. Uni- 

 formity in flavor cannot always be obtained by following fixed 

 rules. This is especially true of raw cream butter where the 

 fermentations which take place in the cream are subject to the 

 varying conditions of milk, cream and weather that influence 

 their growth. When the cows receive sound, wholesome feed and 

 are milked in a clean way, as is generally the case after a rain 

 in June, milk often has a different taste from that produced only a 

 few months later by the same cows, which may be standing all 

 day in stagnant water fighting flies in a pasture that has become 

 barren of feed in consequence of a continued drought. There is 

 a great difference in the purity of the milk produced under these 

 two conditions and in the variety of bacteria found in the cream 

 obtained from it. 



489. The butter made from such milk will naturally vary in 

 flavor under the opposite conditions, especially when churned 

 from raw cream, because in this case nothing has been done to re- 

 duce the number of bacteria usually present in such cream. This 

 difficulty may be overcome by destroying the bacteria present and 

 by introducing a pure culture of selected bacteria. The butter 

 maker has therefore much better chances of making butter that is 

 uniform in quality during the entire year, when he pasteurizes 

 either the milk or cream and ripens the cream with a carefully 

 prepared starter. So long as the pasteurizing is well done and 

 the starter is uniformly good, the butter will possess the same mild 

 and sweet flavor which, though not so high and pronounced as is 

 sometimes obtained in raw cream butter, will yet be more satis- 

 factory to the trade because of its uniformity in flavor and its good 

 keeping qualities. 



490. The objections that have been made to pasteurized 

 cream butter in America as the result of a few widely scattered 



